Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) both fall under the umbrella of Agile methodologies or frameworks.

Scrum for Productivity

Scrum is a product development and project management methodology. It defines practices and rules to be used by project management, customers, and development team to maximize the productivity and value of development effort. It puts the relevant responsibilities to where they should ideally belong. With Scrum, businesses own and manage projects and IT teams commit to consistently and regularly deliver a high quality software. All the involved parties are driven by sense of ownership and work in close collaboration through continuos feedback cycles rather than tossing them over the wall to each other and hoping for the best.

Scrum does not have any engineering practices and implicitly uses those at the organization where it is being implemented. When these engineering practices are weak, overall productivity is lessened. That is the reason that Scrum needs to be complemented with strong engineering practices

XP for Quality

XP is an engineering methodology that consists of practices that ensure top quality, focused code. XP begins with four values: Communication, Feedback, Simplicity, and Courage. It then builds up to a dozen practices. XP weaves them into a synergistic whole where each one is reinforced by the others and is required for the whole to work.

These values and their underlying practices and techniques are not divisible and individually selectable; they form a coherent, whole process. Teams that use XP practices are adhering to strong engineering disciplines. Like guilds, the teams that follow these practices generate good products.

XP doesn't have any management practices. XP tells management where it needs them, but offers few insights into maximizing value.

Winning Combination: Scrum and XP

Scrum and XP provide complimentary practices and rules. They overlap at the planning game (XP) and Sprint planning (Scrum). Both encourage similar values, minimizing otherwise troublesome disconnects between management and developers. Combined, they provide a structure within which a customer can evolve a software product that best meets his or her needs, and can implement quality functionality incrementally to take advantage of business opportunities.

While Scrum provides a comprehensive, over arching project management approach, XP talks about engineering practices. The practices are detailed to the matter of minutes spent.

The industry is gradually moving towards embracing both Scrum and XP for effective and efficient software development

Both Scrum and XP ask teams to complete some tangible piece of shippable work by the end of each iteration. Inphina's Practices weave a dynamic combination of Scrum and XP to deliver the right product at the right time with the right quality and at the right cost.

While product development does involve brainstorming and doing some analysis upfront, however, we feel that the best way to arrive at a simple and evolutionary design is to stop thinking about the software at the theoretical level. Instead of spending more than required time on analysis and design, it is way better to dive in, get hands dirty, and start building the product.

Releasing early for feedback, coupled with our practices helps in confronting and eradicating mistakes much earlier. The mistakes made early in the product are significantly less expensive than those made later.