Showing posts with label project management methodology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label project management methodology. Show all posts

Thursday 3 April 2014

Why Certain Businesses Fail To Benefit From Scrum – Part 1

Scrum may be difficult to understand and follow
Despite the fact that scrum framework helps to provide solutions for the drawbacks prevailing in traditional project management methodologies, in many cases, the company implementing scrum for the first time may face certain issues associated with scrum itself. Scrum methodology is highly adaptable and powerful. It can cater to changing market conditions, and successfully incorporate the changes within the product development cycle, even while the product is currently being developed. There are several advantages, which makes Agile scrum a much desired development methodology. However, implementing scrum in a successful manner can prove to be very challenging for first timers. The impediments faced are generally related to the transition process, as the company starts migrating from its current development methodology to scrum. For majority of people new to scrum, the environment may appear to be complex, rigid, and difficult to understand and follow. This is a misconception since scrum can be almost everything but not rigid in the truest sense. In the initial stage, the team may find it difficult to understand how scrum works, and what kind of roles the product owner and scrum master play while implementing scrum. In addition, there are certain artifacts or objects such as the product backlog and the sprint backlog which figure prominently in scrum. Moreover, scrum events such as the daily sprint meeting, sprint planning meeting, sprint retrospective meeting, and the sprint review meeting may confuse novices why they exist, or are needed in the first place. Scrum can be quite different when compared to traditional waterfall project development methods, and people often start developing a negative attitude towards it simply because they fail to understand it.   

Not getting the desired results out of scrum implementation
A company or a business may decide to implement scrum to reduce the project turnaround time or increase the productivity and the ROI. There is always a reason why an ongoing process flow may be required to be replaced by a new one by the business owners. The management and stakeholders may have “heard” about the obvious benefits of using scrum, and how their business can possibly benefit from them. The management personnel may have high expectations, and might even plan their marketing goals and objective keeping in mind the benefits availed by implementing scrum in their ongoing projects. However, in many cases, due to various reasons scrum implementation may fail to produce the desired results for the particular business, and the entire project may go askew with no clear indication as to in which direction it is heading for. The reasons may be many and varied. It is important to know what they are if scrum is to be implemented successfully.  

·       Improper communication channels and feedback
Broken feedback channels and improper communication processes primarily lead to a void in the learning process which is so very important while implementing scrum. A major issue is the lack of feedback availed during the scrum meetings and important information not being transmitted to the team members in the correct manner, or at the correct time. In scrum, the entire project is developed in short bursts of development activity called sprints. Sprints are to be conducted on a daily basis. The daily stand up or the daily scrum meeting precedes the sprint activity. Three important questions are to be answered during the meeting. The product increment during the daily sprint can be affected by the answers availed during the stand up. After the entire sprint is over, a sprint review meeting is held to evaluate the development carried out by the team. The product owner and the scrum master evaluate the entire sprint during the review, and efforts are made to generate new findings based upon prior experiences. The findings need to be conveyed to the team.

Result
When the communication channel fails due to some reason and proper feedback is not transmitted to the team members, they may start with a new sprint and repeat the same mistakes they made in the prior sprint. Scrum supports self-learning and self-correction activities which are possible only when a proper communication channel is set in place, and feedback is made available to the entire team. If the team members do not receive any feedback or communications from the concerned personnel, they may proceed with future activities without any definite aim or objective.  This can be disastrous for scrum because everything is planned, and each activity is carefully regulated in scrum. The team members fail to perform in the correct manner and the entire project suffers as a consequence.     

·       Organization lacks sufficient scrum knowledge and experience
Project managers are more used to traditional waterfall methods and are familiar with their process flow. Scrum is very different, and the framework should be understood in depth before it can be used or implemented in any particular way or manner. It is essential that the entire team be educated in scrum and knows how it works. The team members should be well apprised about the importance of the scrum artifacts and the purpose of the meetings. They should be made aware about the importance of sharing information in scrum and collaborating with other team members. At times, the team may not be clear about how a scrum meeting should be ideally conducted, and what information ought to be availed from it. A lack of clear purpose may render the entire meeting as useless. The team members may fail to deliver productivity in a scheduled or effective manner. The entire scrum process could be hampered.Read more on http://blog.quickscrum.com/post/2014/03/31/Why-Certain-Businesses-Fail-To-Benefit-From-Scrum-%E2%80%93-Part-1.aspx

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