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Empowering Your Scrum Team: Why Developers Should Own the Sprint Backlog

Written by Aman Fogat on July 25, 2024. Posted in Articles.

In my seven years as a Business Analyst, I’ve worked with numerous Scrum teams across various projects. One issue that I’ve repeatedly encountered is the confusion over who owns the Product Backlog versus the Sprint Backlog. This misunderstanding often leads to inefficiencies and tension within the team. Through my experiences, I’ve come to realize the importance of clearly defining these roles to ensure smooth and successful project execution.

In the dynamic world of Agile development, Scrum stands out as a framework designed to promote collaboration, flexibility, and continuous improvement. However, even within this well-structured framework, misconceptions can arise, particularly regarding the ownership of the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog. Clarifying these roles is essential for any team aiming to harness the full potential of Scrum.

The Core Misconception

During Scrum training sessions, particularly with teams that have prior experience, one topic often sparks intense discussion: who truly owns the backlogs? The common but flawed practice is for the Product Owner to decide what work the team should pull into a sprint. While this may seem like an efficient approach, it fundamentally misinterprets the roles and responsibilities within Scrum.

Understanding the Roles

The Product Owner is tasked with maximizing the value of the product by managing the Product Backlog. This involves understanding stakeholder needs, prioritizing features, and ensuring the backlog is transparent and visible. However, the actual implementation of these backlog items is the responsibility of the Developers. They have the technical knowledge and expertise to assess which items are feasible, independent, and deliverable within the constraints of a sprint.

Why This Misconception Is Problematic

When the Product Owner oversteps and dictates the sprint tasks, it creates several issues:

Undermines Developer Accountability: Developers are accountable for the work completed during the sprint. If they are not involved in selecting the tasks, their ability to commit to and deliver on these tasks is compromised.
Ignores Technical Expertise: Developers are the ones with the hands-on experience and technical skills necessary to gauge the complexity and interdependencies of the tasks. By excluding them from the decision-making process, teams risk selecting inappropriate tasks that may not be deliverable within the sprint timeframe.
Erodes Trust: Effective Scrum relies on mutual trust. When Product Owners dictate sprint tasks, it signals a lack of trust in the Developers’ ability to manage their work, which can lead to demotivation and disengagement.

The Product Owner’s Role in Ordering the Backlog

A proficient Product Owner will order the Product Backlog to maximize value, but also actively seek input from the Developers. This collaborative approach ensures that the backlog not only aligns with business priorities but also accommodates technical realities. Enabling work, technical debt, and other critical tasks should be prioritized with input from those who understand the technical landscape best—the Developers.

The Developers’ Autonomy in Sprint Planning

Developers must have the autonomy to pull work “out of order” when it makes technical sense. This flexibility allows the team to adapt to emerging dependencies, unforeseen challenges, and optimization opportunities. When such deviations occur, they should prompt discussions that ensure the entire team understands the rationale behind the decision. These discussions should focus on technical and strategic reasons, avoiding subjective motivations like personal preferences.

Fostering Trust and Professionalism

Trust is the cornerstone of successful Scrum practice. The Product Owner must trust the Developers to manage the Sprint Backlog effectively, just as the Developers trust the Product Owner to prioritize the Product Backlog judiciously. This mutual trust encourages professionalism, accountability, and open communication.

When Developers are trusted to manage their work, they are more likely to take ownership of their tasks, leading to higher engagement and productivity. Conversely, when Product Owners trust Developers with this responsibility, it fosters a collaborative environment where both parties feel valued and empowered.

Addressing Trust Issues

If a Product Owner finds themselves deciding what work Developers should deliver in a sprint, it highlights a deeper trust issue that needs addressing. Building this trust involves:

Open Communication: Regularly discuss priorities, challenges, and feedback openly within the team.
Collaborative Planning: Involve Developers in the sprint planning process, allowing them to provide input and make decisions.
Reflective Practices: Use retrospectives to identify and address trust issues, facilitating an open dialogue about how to improve team dynamics.

Conclusion

Understanding and respecting the distinct roles within Scrum is essential for maximizing efficiency and delivering high-quality products. The Product Owner should focus on prioritizing and articulating value, while the Developers should have the autonomy to manage the Sprint Backlog. By fostering an environment of trust and open communication, teams can navigate the complexities of development more effectively and achieve their goals more consistently.

Empowering Developers to own the Sprint Backlog not only leverages their technical expertise but also builds a more cohesive, motivated, and high-performing team. Trust your team, respect their insights, and watch as they deliver exceptional results sprint after sprint.

How to Mitigate Scope Creep

Written by Esther Folorunso on July 24, 2024. Posted in Articles.

The BABOK emphasizes that scope is about defining clear boundaries. It’s about understanding what the project or solution entails and what it doesn’t. While there is no clear definition of the word scope in the BABOK, it does refer to this concept in some ways: scope modeling, solution scope, etc.

However, have you ever felt like a project kept growing in size and complexity, slowly eating away at your resources and deadlines? Well, the culprit has a name: scope creep. As a business analyst or project manager, one of the most challenging aspects of any project is ensuring effective control over scope creep.

By the way, what exactly does the word scope creep mean?

Scope creep, sometimes called requirements creep, is simply the addition of requirements, tasks, or deliverables that are usually more often than not out of the project scope. Another definition by the PMBOK explains scope creep as “adding features and functionality (project scope) without addressing the effects on time, costs, and resources, or without customer approval. This situation often results in pressure to deliver beyond the initial agreed-upon scope, as formally stated in the project charter. This uncontrolled expansion happens without corresponding adjustments to time, cost, and resources, leading to significant project overruns.

Therefore, to achieve successful project delivery, it is crucial to understand scope creep and how to mitigate it.

What are some of the causes of scope creep?

Poor scope definition and work breakdown structure (WBS): A too-broad or poorly defined scope often results in misunderstandings about project requirements and goals, steering projects off course. This ambiguity creates a high potential for scope creep. Also, if the initial project goals and deliverables are poorly defined or leave room for interpretation, changes and additions become easy to justify.
Ambiguous Project Objectives: Vague or ambiguous project goals can lead to differing interpretations and expectations among stakeholders. Setting ambitious goals that are out of reach for the allocated time and resources can lead to pressure to add features or functionalities to meet those goals, even if it strains the project.
Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: Having an excessive number of stakeholders with decision-making power can create confusion and lead to conflicting requests that push the project beyond its original scope.
Poor stakeholder engagement: Internal disagreements among stakeholders and inadequate planning also contribute to scope creep. Simply defining the scope isn’t enough; it’s essential to consider and address stakeholder opinions and concerns to prevent scope creep.
Changing Market Conditions: Changing market conditions, such as new trends or competitive pressures, often trigger scope creep by prompting the inclusion of new project features or requirements not initially planned. This expansion can lead to the project’s scope exceeding its original boundaries, impacting timelines, budgets, and resources.
Lack of Change Control Process: The absence of a formal change control process allows for unauthorized modifications to the project scope, leading to scope creep and potentially impacting project timelines, budgets, and outcomes.

Impact of Scope Creep

Budget Overruns: Additional features or requirements will typically require more resources, leading to increased costs.
Resource Strain: Team members may become overextended, leading to burnout and decreased productivity.
Quality Compromise: Rushed or inadequately planned changes can affect the overall quality of the deliverables.
Schedule Delays: Unplanned additions to the project scope can extend the project timeline and even lead to missed deadlines.
Stakeholder Dissatisfaction: Failure to manage expectations and deliver within agreed-upon parameters can lead to dissatisfaction and a loss of trust among stakeholders.

Methods for dealing with scope creep:

A clear definition of the project scope is necessary.

All stakeholders must ensure that the scope statement is detailed and agreed upon. Before starting any project, we must establish a clear definition of the project scope and a baseline. To arrive at a clearly defined scope, the thorough gathering and documentation of requirements is the first line of defense against scope creep. Using techniques such as interviews, workshops, and surveys ensures clarity and completeness from the outset. Successful completion of this process will aid in the development of clearly defined objectives and requirements. When project goals and requirements are well defined from the beginning, it prevents misunderstandings and ensures alignment across all stakeholders. This clarity sets the foundation for a focused project scope and minimizes the likelihood of scope creep throughout the project lifecycle.

Change Management

It is crucial to implement a robust change control process. This includes having a formal process for evaluating and authorizing any changes to the project scope. Developing and enforcing a structured process for submitting, evaluating, and approving scope changes is crucial for maintaining project integrity. The criteria for assessing change requests should be part of this process, guaranteeing their alignment with the project goals and their ability to fit within the existing constraints.

Impact Analysis

Conducting impact analysis for proposed changes will help understand their effect on the project. Assessing each change request’s implications on the project’s timeline, budget, and resources will help to make informed decisions. By incorporating this, one can effectively manage scope creep and ensure projects stay on track for success.

Requirement Prioritization

Working with stakeholders to prioritize requirements and features based on business value and feasibility is important. It is important to use techniques such as MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, won’t have) to categorize requirements and manage stakeholder expectations effectively.

Regular Reviews

It is important to regularly review project progress against the baseline or agreed-upon scope. This helps to identify and address scope deviations promptly. Weekly touchpoints or standup meetings with stakeholders based on the agreed-upon project approach could accomplish this.

Conclusion

In conclusion, scope creep is a real and ever-present threat to project success. However, the strategies mentioned above can effectively address this threat. Bear in mind that clear communication, proactive planning, and a commitment to a well-defined scope are your best weapons in the fight against scope creep. With these tools in your arsenal, you can deliver projects on time and within budget that meet the original objectives, ensuring success for both you and your stakeholders.

Contribution as a Form of Professional Development

Written by Adrian Reed on July 17, 2024. Posted in Articles.

As practitioners of change, we are probably all acutely aware that we need to continually develop. There is always more to learn, and there are countless ways of learning it. The fact that you are reading this article now, on a business analysis website, shows that you are interested in your professional development—and kudos to you for doing so! After all, it is those that develop and keep up to date that will thrive in an increasingly competitive environment.

However, professional development is often seen as a consumption-based activity. Ask a typical BA what development activities they have undertaken recently, and they’ll likely respond by telling you about articles they’ve read, training they’ve been on, webinars they’ve watched and so forth. All of these are fantastic ways of hearing different perspectives, and it is great that there are so many cost-effective (and free) options out there.

From Consumption to Competence (Through Practice)

Yet consumption alone rarely enhances a skill. I could ‘consume’ (read) a book about how to fly a passenger jet, yet you probably wouldn’t trust me to fly one if that’s the only experience I had. In fact, even if I’d been on a one-day course and we’d done some group-work simulating flying, you’d probably argue that isn’t enough. And of course you’d be right, pilots (presumably) need lots of time in the simulator, and hours flying generally, before they are qualified to fly a commercial airliner.

Although you or I are unlikely to be racing to the cockpit of an Airbus A380 any time soon, it’s likely that we will need to learn new skills, techniques and concepts. The broader point here is that just reading about them, or watching a YouTube video about them isn’t enough. Actually using them is crucial. This is where the ‘rubber meets the road’, where even more learning happens, as the technique or concept is put into practice within a particular context. It’s often the case that some adaptations are necessary—a technique that works just fine in the classroom may need some finessing to work in the real world. And that’s just fine, deliberate and selective adaptations to the nuances of the world are precisely what we should do as analysts.

From Competence to Contribution

It’s often been said that if you want to really test your knowledge of something, try and explain it to others. There is a strong element of truth in this, as anyone who has ever created a presentation or training course will tell you! Putting together an article or presentation tends to highlight any gaps in thinking, and it’s an opportunity for reflection.

This is where contribution to the BA community can become part of a deliberate professional development strategy. Perhaps there’s a technique that you’ve mastered: that would be a fantastic topic for a ‘skills exchange’ session with your colleagues. Perhaps that would involve a short presentation and a Q&A. Your colleagues would learn about the technique, within the context of your organization and by creating the presentation (and responding to the Q&A) you’d likely learn more too. A real win/win.

It’s possible to go even further. While we may be members of a Community of Practice within our organizations, we could also consider ourselves to be members of a global Community of Practice of interested BAs. You and I are connected via this article and this website. Others are connected through social media networks such as LinkedIn.

This provides us with the opportunity to write, blog, create videos and share experiences with people outside of our organizations too. Of course, it’s crucial not to share anything confidential or commercially sensitive, but sharing ‘how to write a user story really well’ or ‘how I used use cases to clarify complex requirements’ is unlikely to be controversial! It also has the advantage that it helps us all to connect with other interested BAs around the world. Hitting the ‘publish’ button can be scary, but the act of creating something is hugely worthwhile, and others will benefit from it.

Incidentally, if you’re reading this thinking “I’m too inexperienced to write or create anything” or “I don’t have anything worth writing about”, in my experience you are probably doing yourself a disservice. BAs tend to be somewhat modest, and everyone has an interesting professional story to tell!

Take a Blended Approach

Community contribution can be part of a blended professional development plan. Alongside consumption and practice, it can be a great way of reflecting, while also sharing experiences and building BA networks. The nature of the blend will vary depending on practitioner, but considering the options is key.

And if you do decide to create and share something, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know about it!

Modernization of a Legacy Product – How to Define Requirements?

Written by Sphoorthy Pamaraju on July 10, 2024. Posted in Articles.

The decision is made! The product manager decided to overhaul the legacy B2B web-based software product recently acquired from another company. The aim is to enhance its feature set, improve the user experience, transition it to modern infrastructure and technology, and rebrand it with the new company’s name. Being new to the product, the product manager is not informative on all of its features, like what can be kept and enhanced vs. killed and replaced. This article talks about how a business analyst (BA) could immensely help the product manager and development team when modernizing a legacy product and how product managers can use their work for decision-making.

Any modernization project looks daunting initially, but if done systematically and strategically, it is less stressful. Current state analysis is a crucial step in such projects, and BA could start this activity by evaluating the existing state of the following components in the product:

Process flows
User flows
CRUD operations in the UI
APIs and their definition
High-level functional and technical architecture
Data model
External interfaces
Business logic, etc.

To perform the above evaluation, the following are a few sources of information:

Jira/Rally/other scrum tools, Confluence/other document management tools
Training material and help content(if any)
Demos or walkthroughs by SMEs
Source code
Wireframes or UI mockups
Browser developer tools
Problems raised by the customer with L3 support
Client interviews
Database(s)

After collecting information, a major challenge comes in correlating two or more pieces. As we know, nowadays, due to the adoption of agile delivery, teams deliver features incrementally, and it is hard to find a single source of truth on the latest state of the product’s functionality. In that case, going through different versions of resources and making sense of the information is a tough task.

To understand what a particular functionality does, it is always better to look through resources and their versions with the help of epic or feature numbers, user story numbers, or functionality/business process names and correlate them with various sources of information. This is a laborious and focused activity, and all the credit for this heavy lifting goes to BA or anyone who does it.

To avoid such challenges in the future, it is always best practice for business analysts or developers to tag user stories, features, or epic numbers . while working on documentation pages or code pull requests. Sometimes teams are in a rush to deliver a quick fix, and documentation is the last priority for them, so documentation or user story acceptance criteria may not exist at all. In those cases, it is a good idea to talk to people who worked on those fixes to understand what has been built.

After this activity, BA could produce traceability between the functionality name, its description, impacted user flows, impacted process flows, links to legacy UI or UI mockups, API endpoints, database entities and attributes impacted, business logic (if any), and finally customer feedback.

Overall, this intense and time-consuming analysis helps in gaining insights into the existing state of the product, data processing, how well it is adopted by customers, and how satisfied they are. Opportunities for product extension or enhancement can be explored based on this analysis and other techniques that align product strategy (product strategy contains a high-level plan for what the product thinks of doing about the product). For example, the goal could be to elevate the product to match its competitor by XXXX year, and competitor analysis can be used to identify gaps the product has with its competitors.

Focus group discussions and brainstorming sessions between product managers, architects, business analysts, UI/UX designers, and developers could help flush out feasible improvements or extensions to the product. In many large companies, cross-functional initiatives are quite common. It is important to involve experts from cross-functional teams, for example, infrastructure, security, and legal experts, in these discussions for their valuable feedback. Also, in companies with multiple product portfolios, the key objective is to maximize the efficient utilization of shared and common components within the platform across products.

This approach is called the product and platform model. To adhere to this model, platform requirements must be given priority. These interactions are wise to have immediately after the commencement of any project initiative and, if possible, even before, as they help the product manager pitch requirements that are achievable and align with organizational goals and objectives. All of this collaboration with different stakeholders helps product managers come up with future requirements with confidence, and requirements can move through the design and development phases with fewer roadblocks.

Conclusion:

I would like to break the myth that product managers are solely responsible for requirements. BA plays a pivotal role in supporting product managers with their in-depth analysis and helping them enrich the product. Collaboration among the product manager, BA, and other cross-functional team members brings unique perspectives and insights, leading to more comprehensive and feasible requirements.

Beware Indecision Inertia: The Importance Of The “Do Nothing” Option

Written by Adrian Reed on July 4, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Organizational change can be hard. People get into routines, and convincing people to adapt the way that they work can be difficult. This is a seemingly human trait: think about how hard it can be to adapt when an icon or menu option moves in a new version of Windows. We have probably all taken a while to adapt to things like this, occasionally wishing that we could reinstate the older version of the software that we are so used to. If even a simple change like this can cause initial confusion and frustration, no wonder a larger change such as an office move or process change can be challenging.

When a potential change is being discussed, there are usually supporters and detractors. It’s important to understand the different perspectives, and work together to understand the best way forward. Yet beneath the overt support and reluctance, there are other subtler things to look out for too. One is indecision inertia.

What is indecision inertia?

Although you might never have heard the term ‘indecision inertia’, you’ve almost certainly experienced it. Imagine a stakeholder needing to make a key decision, which is pivotal to a particular project progressing. It is a key dependency, and it is going to block progress if the decision is not made. They very reasonably ask for some data or a report in order to make the decision.

It takes some time to assimilate the information provided, but when it is played back to them (with a recommendation) rather than making a decision, they ask for more information. Or they raise a set of new questions, and more investigation is required. On the one hand, this is useful as they are helping to mitigate risks. On the other hand, it sometimes feels like the ‘can is being kicked down the road’.

Put simply: Sometimes the perception is that the least risky thing to do is nothing. In order to build a case for doing something a stakeholder might feel there needs to be watertight evidence and data. Yet, in reality, ‘watertight’ data rarely (if ever) exists. Can you say for certain the benefits that a project will bring? Or how long it’ll take? Or how much it’ll cost? Sure, these things can be estimated, based on a set of assumptions, but any certainty that is provided is entirely illusionary.

Indecision inertia occurs when the path of least resistance is doing nothing even though, when analyzed holistically, that might not be the most appropriate thing to do.

Incidentally, this pattern plays out in personal life too. People sometimes stay in jobs longer than they should (I know I did!) for fear of the ‘risk’ of applying elsewhere. People keep the same old car for too long, even when the maintenance is a nightmare, because it’s the car that they know and love…

The Role Of Holistic Analysis

This is an area where business analysis is crucial. In many cases ‘doing nothing’ isn’t a cost-free, or risk-free option. Imagine an organization running an older, legacy, packaged IT system that is going into extended support. Soon it’ll be out of support entirely. It’s been extended and customized over the years, and the development team affectionately define it as a ‘bag of spanners’. It works, it’s reasonably reliable (at the moment), and the prospect of spending money to replace it is a hard decision to make.

Yet doing nothing will lead to increasing maintenance costs, risks that it’ll become unmaintainable, and when support eventually expires there won’t be security patches and updates which leads to an even more worrying risk. Just like a beloved old car that is kept too long and breaks down at the worst of all times leaving its passengers stranded, this beloved old IT system might implode, get hacked, or develop other issues at the worst time. And if it’s a core system, every minute it is down is probably costing significant sums…

This is a hypothetical example, but it shows the importance of understanding that doing nothing is an option, and it has costs, benefits and risks associated with it. This is important as it is a way of reframing the decision. Often a decision is seen as:

Stay as we are (which is safe, and nobody gets sacked for doing nothing)
Do something risky / costly (and put the sponsor’s neck on the line if it goes wrong)

Whereas, the real decision is often

Stay as we are, and things will get progressively worse, riskier and more costly (and action will need to be taken at sometime)
Do something, understanding the risks and costs (but do so at a time of our choosing, rather than when some major risk event forces us to)

This is simplified, but it illustrates the point.

Conclusion

In summary, change is hard, and decision-making is hard. As analysts, we can help decision-makers to make informed decisions. Analyzing and presenting the ‘do nothing’ option can be part of this.