We do Scrum but…
Are you serious? — Episode 59
Many organisations have abandoned Project Management methodologies to embrace Scrum. With that they introduced empiricism:
“Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known. Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk. Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.” — Scrum Guide 2017
This is why Scrum has Sprints. Scrum Teams create a plan that covers a Sprint of no more than a month and during the Sprint teams inspect and adapt.
What’s a Sprint Review?
One of the crucial events is the Sprint Review. This is where Scrum Teams meet with stakeholders to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog. This includes discussing new insights that can have an impact on the Product Backlog. The Product Backlog is an ordered list of things that are known to be needed. The insights can change any time, but the Sprint Review is THE place where changes of insights are expected.
What’s a Steering Committee?
A Steering Committee is a project governance meeting where the big decisions are made. They discuss things like:
Checking and approving the Project Plan.
Monitoring progress against the Project Plan.
Constant re-assessment of the Business Case — answer if the project still worthwhile;
Assess and approve changes to the Project Plan;
Making decisions on priority of deliverables;
Reviewing and approving the project development strategy;
Reviewing and suggesting solutions for the issues critical to project success.
Scrum and scope, time and costs
Scrum is all about optimising the value of the product, focusing on delivering the most valuable items first. This is a different approach than traditional projects have where the aim is to deliver all requirements at a planned date. Value will be delivered near the end of the project. Below is a visualisation of this:
Note that the picture is a simplification. I painted a rare scenario where a traditional project delivers the exact same value at the end as a Scrum driven initiative. I did this to make the point clear that Scrum starts adding value from the get-go while a traditional project does it at the end.
This makes the governance totally different. Instead of discussing possible changes in scope, time and costs the discussion is about what would be the next most valuable thing and — at a certain point — whether you reached the point where the added value no longer justifies the costs.
Scrum’s way of tackling the Steering Committee topics
Let’s look at how Scrum covers the topics typically addressed in a Steering Committee, point by point.
Checking and approving the Project Plan / Making decisions on priority of deliverables
Scrum doesn’t have a Project Plan in the traditional sense. Instead Scrum works with a Product Backlog. The Sprint Review is intended to discuss the order of the Product Backlog, adding, changing and removing items based on new insights.
Constant re-assessment of the Business Case — answer if the project still worthwhile
The Sprint Review is the ideal event to discuss if the projected value of the items on the Product Backlog is worth it to invest the time and effort.
Reviewing and approving the project development strategy
Scrum works with self-organising teams. The team decides HOW to create an increment and the team needs to get the trust that they are perfectly capable to decide how they create the increment. Within Scrum the topic of ‘how’ is not for people outside the team. Scrum Teams may address certain needs (like having someone with certain skills added to the team) which then can be followed up by management.
Monitoring progress against the Project Plan / Assess and approve changes to the Project Plan
Here are two activities that belong to the Sprint Review:
“The Product Owner discusses the Product Backlog as it stands. He or she projects likely target and delivery dates based on progress to date (if needed).” — Scrum Guide 2017
And:
“Review of the timeline, budget, potential capabilities, and marketplace for the next anticipated releases of functionality or capability of the product.” — Scrum Guide 2017
This is the way Scrum tackles these two activities from a traditional Steering Committee. The topics are addressed during the Sprint Review.
Reviewing and suggesting solutions for the issues critical to project success
Solutions (increments) are literally reviewed during the Sprint Review. Based on inspection of the Increment and additional information coming from any of the participants, new ideas/solutions can be discussed. This will result in a re-ordered Product Backlog.
Conclusion
Scrum has its own event addressing all the topics that are in a typical Project Management Steering Committee. But it happens in a different way because Scrum follows a different approach than traditional projects.
The Sprint Review often is played down to be a demo only. This is a serious mistake.
The Sprint Review is a pivotal event to inspect the Product Increment and adapt the way to go forward. It is far more than only discussing what should happen in the coming two weeks.
This is why I say that:
if you have Sprint Reviews the Steering Committee is redundant.
Bring your important stakeholders to the Sprint Review instead. This is bringing far more transparency than having two very similar meetings/events with different participants making decisions that aren’t aligned.
For more on the Sprint Review, here’s Sjoerd Nijland’s awesome article on the topic:
The Sprint Review
Road to PSM III — Episode 19medium.com
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