The agile framework Scrum in the context of lean project management

Revision as of 19:27, 15 September 2016

Scrum is an agile framework, which allows to execute product development or projects in an iterative, incremental way. ^[1] Today's organizations are placed in a highly competitive and challenging market that continuously changes and require the organizations to adapt and to stay flexible. Scrum as agile method allows organizations to do so and is especially successful in this unique field. ^[2] This characteristics make Scrum to the most widely used agile framework. ^[1] Furthermore is Scrum deeply connected with the agile methodology, which is summarized in the "agile manifesto" (2001). ^[3]

This article describes the Scrum framework in reference to the agile methodology. Additionally it provides an insight how Scrum is used in organizations today and finally puts the Scrum framework in the context of lean project management. To do so the lean principles of projects management will be outlines and reflect on Scrum.

Scrum

Scrum is originally an iterative and incremental agile software development procedure model to manage the product development process. ^[4] Since the 1990's understanding of the Scrum framework changed to from being understood as a software developement framework to a general project management framework. Nowadays, Scrum is the most widely adopted agile project management methodology and is IT industry independent. ^{[2] [5]}

Scrum methodology is based on empirical process control theory. Empiricism, and so Scrum, assumes that knowledge is gained from experience and decision making is made on known knowledge. Therefore, Scrum is an circular and incremental methodology following the goal to optimize planing capability and control risk. ^[5] Scrum is performed by cross-functional teams, which work in Sprints, cycles of work.^{[5] [1]} Those cross-functional teams have to perform different Scrum Roles, Scrum Events and Scrum Artifacts to follow the Scrum framework.^{[1] [5]}

In connection, Scrum is based on same three pillars as empirical process control^[5]:

1) Transparency: Process and Obstacles during the project execution are made visible and get documented

2) Inspection: In regular intervals product-functions are delivered and the product as the process gets evaluated

3) Adaption: Specifications of the product, the plan and the process are not determined, but continuously adapted

Scrum is not reducing the complexity of an project by structure the project in smaller an less complex increments.

Nonaka compared the work processes in high-performing and cross-functional teams with the scrum formation used in Rugby. ^[6]

Scrum Roles

The cross-functional Scrum Teams working self organized and can choose the way to accomplish the work by it own. The functional setup of the team has to make dependencies to other functions outside the team unnecessary. Only those teams are able to offer the maximal flexibility, creativity and at the end productivity. Even though the Scrum Teams are free in their working approaches, three Scrum Roles are existing and are imperative to perform. ^[5]In contrast to traditional project management approaches, the role of a project manager is not existing. The more traditional tasks of a project manager are split up and assigned to the three Scrum Roles, where the most management related tasks can be find in the Scrum Roles of the Product Owner and the Development Team.

The Product Owner is last instance and the only decision maker, therefore he or she is responsible in terms of value / return of investment (ROI) maximization of the project. This includes also to maximize the value of the work of the Developement Team. Even though the Product Owner is not working alone, the Product Owner is alone responsible for the value of the project. ^{[1] [5]} However the product owner seems to represent the opinions of a committee it is only one person. The main task of the Product owner is to manage the general Backlog. This can be done actively by the product owner or passively as the product owner manages the Development Team to do so. Independent how the Backlog is managed the Product Owner stays responsible. Also is it the Product Owner, who should optimize and pushes the Development teams performance.

The Development Team executes the project that the Product Owner outlines. This Team is self-organized and consists of cross-functional professionals, which offer all needed expertise to deliver the next Sprint Goal. The Development Team is empowered to work autonomous. There is no existing of sub teams in the Development Team as well as no title for the Team members, all members are referred as "Developers" As we talk about cross-functional teams. team members have primary, secondary and even more skills, but will help where work is to do. This creates a multi learning effect in the teams. In the optimal case the Team is small enough to stay flexible and big enough to contain all necessary skills to complete the Sprint goal.

The Scrum Master is a service provider for the different Scrum roles and for parties outside the Scrum Teams. The Scrum Master offers different services to the different parties, one service the Scrum Master never offers is the active or passive project management. The Scrum Master's duty is to achieve a good understanding of Scrum within the Scrum Team and organization. It is the Scrum Masters responsibility that all Scrum Events attended by the necessary persons and hold efficiently, even though the Scrum Master is not actively moderating or not even participating.

Scrum Values

Throughout Scrum is a empirical approach where self-organized teams working towards the same goal different values have to be shared within the the Scrum Team to make Scrum working efficient. In the Scrum guide Schwaber and Sutherland outlining the values :

-commitment, personally commitment of the Team member to achieve the goals;

-courage, have the courage to do the right tasks and to work on problems;

-focus, all focus on the Sprint and the goals;

-openness, in reference to work and performance challenges of work;

-respect, Scrum Team members respect each other as capable independent person;

as necessary values to live by the every Scrum Team member. Only if those values are shared it creates a atmosphere within the Scrum Team that activates the three pillars of transparency, inspection and adaption, which are necessary for successful Scrum project management.

Additionally, it is essential that the definition of "done", when a increment is completed is understood and lived by the whole Scrum Team. Only if everybody has the same understanding of "done" the Scrum framework can be executed efficiently and without conflicts.

Scrum Events

Scrum is based on repeating events, those events create regularity in the work process and agility at the same time. Also minimizes it the need for extraordinary meetings which are not defined in Scrum.

The Sprint is the core event of Scrum. A Sprint is maximum 4 weeks long period, where an increment of the project is created. Sprints are ending on the set date, they cannot be extended, even though the increment, often also referred as "Done " is not achieved. Sprints are taking place in an iterative, cyclic way, where one Sprint is following directly the privious one. During the Sprint following Scrum Events are performed: Sprint Palnning, Daily Scrums, Development Work, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. Sprints can be considered as independent projects with a maximum duration of four weeks, where as typical for projects, something has to be created. Therefore, before each Sprint is to define, what should be achieved during the Sprint. The stated goal cannot be changed during the Sprint.

Only the Product Owner can cancel a Sprint before it is over. A Sprint should only be cancelled under the circumstance that the Sprint goal gets outdated, this can happen if the organization changes its strategy, unexpected market or technology changes occur. Even though the Sprint is canceled the temporary achievements gets review and all incomplete content of the Backlog gets re-estimated.

The Scrum Event Sprint Planning deals with the definition what work is to achieve during the Sprint. The whole Scrum Team is attending the Event to outline the plan. Sprint Planning is a time frame that can vary, but is capped to maximum eight hours for a four weeks Sprint. Normally for shorter Sprints, also the Sprint Planning phase is shorter. During the Sprint planning two major concerns has to be answered:

1) What should and can be done in the Sprint?

2) How can it be achieved?

The major input for the Sprint Planning is the Backlog and latest achievements, increments as well as the latest performance of the Development Team. During the Sprint Planning event, are requirements of the Backlog chosen by the Development Team, discussed with the Product Owner, in order to define the Sprint Backlog. Last step is to design a Sprint Goal, this objective will guide the work during the Sprint.

Furthermore, the Development Team has to decide how the increment will be achieved and document this process in the Sprint Backlog. In the case the Development team is finding that the chosen content of the Backlog requires to much or to less work it can renegotiate the selected content of the Backlog with the Product Owner. Before the Development Team starts working it has to reasonable explain the Product Owner and Scrum Master how it will achieve self organized the Sprint Goal.

The Daily Scrum as it the names implies is an iterative 15 minutes long Scrum Event that takes place every day at the same time and place. The Daily Scrum is design to give the Development Team the chance to synchronizes activities and outline a plan for the next 24 hours. The plan is created by reviewing the work done since the last Daily Scrum and by forecasting until the next daily scrum. It is a inspection progress towards the Sprint Goal, to complete the Sprint Backlog. The Daily Scrum rises the probability that the Development team stays on track and will meet the Sprint Goals. Efficiently conducted Daily scrum make other meetings reluctant, identifies obstacles, contribute to quick decision making and rises the Development Teams knowledge level. The daily Scrum is the key meeting during the Sprint for inspection and adaption.

At the end of a Sprint the Sprint Review, a informal meeting takes place. The Sprint Review is maximum 4 hours long for a 4 week Sprint and is attended by the Scrum Team and stakeholders. The event is to inspect the increment of the Sprint and discuss the achievements of the Sprint with all relevant persons. The outcome of the Sprint review is a revised Backlog and if needed even a adjusted overall Backlog to reach for new opportunities.

As last Event Sprint Retrospective takes place. The Sprint Retrospective is limited to maximum 3 hours and is for the Scrum team to inspect itself and improve its working procedures during the Sprints. Even tough improvements may be made during the Sprint it is the formal event to focus on inspection and improvement of the working processes.

Scrum Artifacts

Scrum Artifacts are documents or achieved increments, that represent work or value. Scrum Artifacts are design to maximum transparency of information to make them understandable for everybody. Also provides transparency the best base to see opportunities an do inspections and adaptions.

The general Backlog is the main document for the project and is normally ordered list of everything that may be necessary to execute the project. Also is it the only source for make changes to set of requirements for the project. the Backlog is a dynamic document, which is never complete to identify constant changes to execute the project appropriate and useful. at the start the Backlog outlines the initially known and registered requirements of the project. the Backlog growth as the project and environment evolves. The Backlog monitors the progress to the overall goal and shows the remaining work at anytime. The remaining tasks leads to when the project should be conducted, different forecast methods have been proven as useful, e.g. cumulative flows.

The Sprint Backlog contains selected content of the general Backlog that is to achieve during the Sprint. Additionally it contains a plan how the achieve the Increment and the Sprint Goal. the Sprint Backlog is a real-time document of the work status in the Sprint and belongs to the Development Team. It is the bases for the Daily scrum events. As the general Backlog the sprint Backlog changes and emerges during the Sprint. It is monitoring the Sprint progress towards the Sprint Goal.

The Increment is the sum of all achieved requirements, items and content that had been achieved from the general Backlog in the previous Sprints.

Workflow

Lean Project Management

Since the 1990's lean principles has been taken over to general management practices. At the same time many lean approaches had been infiltrating the project based industries and are still part of them. However, there is no research that prove that lean principle in concern of project management are so superior as in the automotive industry, it is visible how operations have improved through lean principles in project management. Studies have shown that lean producers are also superior in context of project perfomance. As the lean principles are originally transferred in the project management context. This transfer is done in Table 1.

Moreover, the lean principles are based on transparency and direct flow, preferable one piece flow. In context of the communication, the flow has to be simplified to avoid in transparency and with it problem hiding. The Pictures illustrate the transformation of the communication flow.

Another major aspect of lean is the ideology of waste. Everything that is not adding value is waste. The lean thinking includes 7 types of waste

Figure 2: IPM as linking element between strategy definition and project based execution.

- Transportation - Inventory - Motion - Waiting - Over-Processing - Over-Production - Defects

Also outlines lean thinking principles to minimize waste:

- simplification - task combination - non value adding task should be eliminated

Scrum in the context of Lean Project Management

This paragraph will put the agile project management frame work Scrum in the context of lean project management. It will outline in which points Scrum is convergent with the lean philosophy and will point out if Scrum should be not only considered as agile.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4} Pete Deemer; Gabrielle Benefield; Craig Larman; Bas Vodde (December 17, 2012). "The Scrum Primer: A Lightweight Guide to the Theory and Practice of Scrum (Version 2.0)."
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} "The State of Scrum: Benchmarks and Guidelines. How the world successfully applying the most popular Agile approach to projects." ScrumAlliance. 2013
3. ↑ http://agilemanifesto.org
4. ↑ "What is Scrum?". What is Scrum? An Agile Framework for Completing Complex Projects - Scrum Alliance. Scrum Alliance. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6} "Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck: Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit", Addison-Wesley, Upper Saddle River, 2003.
6. ↑ "The New New Product Development Game“. Cb.hbsp.harvard.edu, 1. Januar 1986.

^{[1] [2] [3]}