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When implementing Agile/Scrum, there are several process and project challenges that most organizations encounter and must be addressed.
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Quick reference
Agile/Scrum Challenges
When implementing Agile/Scrum, there are several process and project challenges that most organizations encounter and must be addressed.
When to Use Agile/Scrum Challenges
These challenges can arrive at any time in an Agile/Scrum implementation, although they commonly occur early in the transition to Agile/Scrum. Whenever encountered, they must be addressed.
Instructions
Challenges associated with implementing Agile/Scrum can be divided into two categories, process challenges and project challenges.
- Process challenges are those that are related to how the Agile/Scrum methodology is staffed and implemented in the organization.
- Achieve role alignment – this challenge is due to the very different roles and responsibilities with the Agile/Scrum methodology. The typical impact or indication of this challenge is the inability of the Product Owner to establish and maintain the Product Backlog and/or the inability of the Scrum Team to work together effectively during a Sprint. When this occurs, the best approach is to create a pilot project or pilot business unit using Agile/Scrum to model the correct behaviour to the organization.
- Train resources required– this challenge is a resource shortage. The typical impact is that there are no trained Scrum Masters, Product Owners or Scrum Team members to place on the project. The solution is to establish a training program.
- Resistance to change – this challenge is due to portions of the organization maintaining the former project management methodology and rejecting the Agile/Scrum approach. The impact of this is poor project results due to tampering. It requires strong leadership by senior management (who are often the worst offenders of tampering) to overcome this challenge.
- Ineffective project reviews and meetings – this challenge is often a training and facilitation problem. The impact is that the Sprint planning meeting, the Sprint Demo meeting, and the Sprint Retrospective are wastes of time and ineffective. The problem is normally due to an inexperienced or untrained Scrum Master. The Scrum Master needs to ensure the proper individuals are attending the meetings. They also need to clarify expectations with stakeholders before each meeting and ensure the meeting ground rules are followed.
- Project Challenges are those that are related to how well the Product Owner, Scrum Master or Scrum Team manages a particular project.
- Testing approach – this challenge is the recognition of the large amount of testing that must be done to fulfil the Demo Criteria for each story. The impact to the project is that testing activity grows as each story is completed because the team needs to ensure the new Story does not degrade the performance of the Stories already completed. On a complex system the testing can overwhelm the Scrum Team. The solution is to use automatic testing wherever possible – but keep in mind that there will probably need to be several infrastructure Stories to create the automatic testing capability.
- Documentation approach – the challenge here is that Agile/Scrum does not use many of the traditional documentation records because it relies on the Story Card. However, some organization's procedures require the generation of the traditional documentation whether it is needed by the project or not. This adds unnecessary work to the project. When possible modify the documentation procedures, or at least obtain a waiver. Otherwise, the Product Owner must generate a Story Card to create the documentation.
- Regulatory compliance – the challenge is that regulated industries will often have a mandated sequential development process that is not compatible with the Agile/Scrum process. Using Agile/Scrum for the project will lead to a regulatory non-compliance and may prevent new product from being released. The solution to this approach is for the Product Owner to identify and document the mandatory steps on Story Cards and then through the prioritization process ensure compliance – by the way, this is hard to do.
- Scaling up to large projects – this challenge occurs when a large project is using multiple simultaneous Sprints due to the very large scope and complexity of a new product. The impact of this challenge is the difficulty of integrating deliverables from multiple Sprints, especially after that Sprint is completed and the Scrum Team has moved on to another Sprint. This requires very strong system engineering and architecture design. It is also a good idea to add infrastructure stories to develop e stubs and drivers to aid in the integration testing.
Hints and Tips
- Every organization will face some challenges when implementing Agile/Scrum. Don’t be upset by it, expect it, prepare for it, and then react appropriately when the inevitable happens.
- Start with small and simple projects in your organization and build up to large complex system projects.
- When compliance is an issue, you will often be able to do a hybrid development with Agile/Scrum being used to develop the basic product, and then transition to the compliant project management methodology with appropriate review and records.
- 00:04 Hi, this is Ray Sheen.
- 00:06 I'd now like to talk about some of the challenges that organizations and
- 00:09 Scrum teams face when implementing Agile/Scrum,
- 00:12 along with recommended strategies for overcoming those challenges.
- 00:16 Let's start with the challenges associated with implementing the Agile/Scrum process.
- 00:23 The first one is the difficulty of achieving role alignment.
- 00:26 The Agile/Scrum roles are different from traditional project management, and
- 00:30 often there's confusion concerning role responsibility.
- 00:33 One way the impact of the confusion is often illustrated
- 00:37 Is by the project owner's inability to create and maintain a product backlog.
- 00:41 Another way is that the Scrum team is unable to work effectively
- 00:44 during the Sprint because tampering by outside stakeholders or
- 00:48 inappropriate team member engagement.
- 00:50 The most effective solution to this challenge that I have found Is to use
- 00:54 a pilot project or a pilot business unit for the initial implementation.
- 00:58 These individuals are able to model the expected behavior for
- 01:01 the rest of the organization.
- 01:03 That old saying of a picture is worth 1,000 words holds true here.
- 01:07 Once people see how it is supposed to run,
- 01:10 they are much more likely to follow the process.
- 01:13 The next one is resources.
- 01:15 The challenge of acquiring adequate number of trained resources.
- 01:19 An Agile/Scrum methodology implementation is not likely to succeed
- 01:23 if the only investment by the business is to give someone a book on the topic and
- 01:27 tell them to go do it.
- 01:28 The impact of inadequate number of trained Scrum masters, product owners and
- 01:32 Scrum team members Is that the process is not followed, and
- 01:35 the project teams become ineffective.
- 01:38 The solution for this one is pretty easy.
- 01:41 Establish a training program and put new people through it before they start to
- 01:45 participate in an Agile/Scrum project.
- 01:47 The third challenge is one common to any change of a major organizational process
- 01:52 and that is resistance to change.
- 01:55 People are comfortable in the traditional project measure methodology.
- 01:58 They know what to do, how to do it, and when it should be done.
- 02:02 They don't wanna change to something that is different.
- 02:04 The impact is that a portion of the organization won't engage correctly, and
- 02:09 either refuse to participate, or start tampering with the process.
- 02:13 And like any organizational change initiative, the key to successful
- 02:16 implementation is strong, visible leadership from senior management.
- 02:21 The last one I want to discuss is ineffectove reviews and meetings.
- 02:25 In this case, the stakeholders and
- 02:26 team members fail to engage appropriately, either missing meetings or
- 02:30 bringing up the wrong topic for the type of meeting they're attending.
- 02:34 Often this is caused by either poor training or
- 02:37 poor facilitation on the part of the Scrum master.
- 02:40 They need to ensure the stakeholders understand the purpose and
- 02:43 ground rules of each meeting.
- 02:45 They also need to monitor attendance and
- 02:47 ensure the right people are present at each meeting.
- 02:50 Problems in this area are usually a Scrum master issue.
- 02:53 Okay, let's shift gears now to the challenges that the Scrum team and
- 02:57 product owner must deal with on a project level.
- 03:01 The first one is the testing approach.
- 03:04 The difficulty here is that as lower priority stories are completed,
- 03:08 it's often assumed that they do not degrade the performance of
- 03:11 the previously completed stories.
- 03:13 But the only way to know that is to retest the previously completed stories
- 03:17 with the new story.
- 03:19 That means that some tests are run time and time and
- 03:22 time again, consuming test resources on the project.
- 03:26 The best solution for this is to create automated testing.
- 03:30 Then with each new story's demo criteria, the battery of automated tests can be
- 03:34 run without the consuming tons of Scrum team member time.
- 03:39 The next one is the documentation approach.
- 03:41 Of course, the final design must be documented.
- 03:44 But many organizations, and sometimes customers, want
- 03:47 the interim design documented to ensure that the design is progressing well.
- 03:51 That interim documentation is tailored for
- 03:53 the traditional development process, not Agile/Scrum.
- 03:57 So requirements, documents, specifications, and
- 04:00 models are mandated that are irrelevant for an Agile/Scrum development.
- 04:04 What would be appropriate is a product backlog or storycard, but
- 04:08 that is not what the documentation procedure requires.
- 04:12 Creating all the unnecessary documentation is a waste of time.
- 04:16 If possible, modify the procedure or get waivers and
- 04:19 deviations from them when using Agile/Scrum.
- 04:22 Otherwise, the product owner must create stories generating
- 04:25 the useless documentation, and these must be added to the backlog.
- 04:29 The next challenge for the project team is regulatory compliance.
- 04:33 In particular, some regulated industries have mandated development procedures.
- 04:37 And failure to follow the required procedure is a compliance issue.
- 04:41 These procedures are currently based upon traditional project management and
- 04:45 are not compatible with Agile/Scrum.
- 04:47 If you want to try and use Agile/Scrum anyway, I suggest that the product owner
- 04:51 create stories for all the mandated items and selects those for the sprints, and
- 04:56 prioritizes them so that they will follow the mandated approach.
- 05:01 The last challenge I want to mention for projects and project teams, is when you
- 05:05 try to scale the Agile/Scrum methodology up to apply it to a large systems project.
- 05:10 When I've seen and read of organizations doing that,
- 05:13 they will often try to run multiple simultaneous sprints
- 05:16 that are working on different aspects of the project at the same time.
- 05:20 If you are attempting this, be sure to have strong systems engineering and
- 05:24 systems architecture stories done early in the project, to control the interfaces.
- 05:29 You will also need a number of infrastructure stories for the stubs and
- 05:33 drivers.
- 05:34 These are dummy modules that emulate the performance of parts of the system.
- 05:38 These are used to test parts of the system by representing the missing components and
- 05:42 modules that have not yet been completed.
- 05:44 Every change brings challenges, and Agile/Scrum is no different.
- 05:49 Watch for these, and when you recognize that they are occurring,
- 05:54 apply the appropriate response to get back on track.
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