Monday, April 22, 2013

Few Issues in Scrum implementation

1. Scrum Masters are expected to manage deliveries in a very complex distributed environment (Offshore developers and testers, Onsite dev and test leads, Onsite Project Managers, Offshore development manager, Offshore Scrum Master). Hard to do away with the non-scrum roles as client cannot lay off people.

<Raghav>: We should not use the word "Manage" any more if you want to give higher business value by using true agile methodology. You should make teams self-organized and self-managed. Try overlapped roles. Have Scrum master and Business Analyst roles at offshore and onsite. They can scale up to 3 scrum teams in onsite - offshore model. We should have team members (of all skills) in all these 3 scrum teams at both the locations.  Offshore scrum master will continue to support the team at offshore and sync with onsite scrum master to seek help from onsite Vice-Versa. Same need to be built in business analyst role too. Involve onsite tech leads during sprint 0, sprint planning phase -1 (during what part) and give maximum value to inputs provided by them during sprint review. Ask them to bring the other team members up to their speed so that we can make use of their technical expertise and also can make offshore teams more productive.
Be careful during collaboration. Do not let the tech leads get into waterfall style...

2. Twice a week, Scrum of Scrums that happens during US overlap hours, is used as a forum to escalate issues to Project Managers where Scrum Masters bring impediments to the notice of the Project managers.

<Raghav> First of all we need to bring more overlap hours between onsite offshore teams. Like India can operate form 11:00 am to 8:00 pm while US  (EST) team can work from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm. This will bring healthy overlap without much pressure on team members. Have daily standup, technical call, business call and also scrum of scrums during overlap hours. Remember, we will get much business value if offshore is not participating ina nay of these calls.
 
3. Daily Scrum calls happening during US overlap hours is the forum for team developers and testers to highlight issues/ impediments to Scrum master.

4. Once in a month, Scrum of Scrums is used to do the Sprint allocation of work to Scrum teams. Product Owners say which features need prioritized, development managers say it's feasible or not, Project managers document the allocation of features to each scrum team and Scrum masters are expected to relay the expectations to their Scrum team.
<Raghav>  I think you are using scrum of scrums for wrong purpose. No one should allocate the work. Teams should pick up. Development manager cannot decide on behalf of the team. Development manager is chicken. This is one of anti-pattern. It appears like, more chickens speaking than pigs. Watch out.

5. Requirements gathering happens at the start of the sprint, teams get to know user stories for that sprint and give story point estimation and commit to the user stories.

6. The first week is the Planning and Scope commitment week, the second week is the design week, third week is actual construction and testing week and fourth week is defect fixing week.
<Raghav> Looks like you are trying to build mini waterfall here. We need to spend some time on every sprint to collect the requirement and spend rest of the time on Design-Develop-Test happening in parallel. What you are trying is neither Scrum nor water fall it is Scrum-Fall.



I will keep adding more to this Post as and when I get more information.. 
Please post your comments and inputs so that this list will evelove and can become all inclusive over the time.

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