Skip to main content

Scrum: In a large enterprise environment can the scrum sprint/iterations synchronized?

I have a simple guideline for this

Leave it to the teams - unsynchronized sprints
  • Simple products with single teams working on it
  • If you have a different independent products which rarely or doesn’t communicate with each other.
Team will be more creative and it gives more flexibility. Because of all these unsynchronized releases there will be lot of churn so the management & PMO should use a lot of common sense in dealing with such cycles.

Use synchronized sprints
  • If you have a big product, with multiple teams working on it
  •  If you a product portfolio of products/applications which communicates with each other
  •  If you want to synchronize the release because of billing, reporting or any other similar reasons
  
Synchronization helps in large organization where we have to worry about lot of complexities. They will have a common reporting tool which can provide the correct view across all the teams. This helps in billing and other administrative jobs also.
In my company we have multiple teams working in a multi-billion USD product suite. We have a two week sprints which is synchronized across the different teams. There are many teams who have a 1 week sprint also.
e.g. – Assume the organization is in Sprint 03, team A is in two week sprint & Team B has one week sprints
So for the sprint team A will have only one sprint - Sprint 03
Team B will have two sprints - Sprint 03(a) & sprint 03( b).
After the two weeks, both teams will jump to Sprint 04.
How about common resources (people/machines)?

When the teams are in the synchronized mode, they may need some common resources (people or machines). How can we make them available for all the teams when they are synchronized? I have heard this question few times. Usually the planning for the sprint happens during the release planning but what is preventing them from discussing the need for common resources ahead of that? During the current sprint itself team can set aside few hours to identify the resources required for next sprint. The Scrum master should ensure that he communicates the need with other managers and scrum masters and make them available to the team at the right time. If due to any reason the shared resources are not available then it should be informed to PO. The necessary priority changes should be made in the product backlog of the team so that team can work on the next item.

I believe companies shouldn't over synchronize to exact date & time also. There may be people who are in multiple teams - Product owners and scrum masters. Ideally a great PO & SM can serve only one team but still we can see them serving more than one teams. Such “shared” people would miss on important meetings.  When I was the scrum master of two teams, I changed the sprint review dates to the next day. So on one day I could attend the review of first team and the very next day the second teams. On Tuesday I had the review of my first team like other teams in company and on Thursday I had my second teams review. It worked perfectly. These small changes in date and time allowed the little flexibility needed to accommodate the important stakeholders.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PDCA & SCRUM (or Agile); Why is it important?

The PDCA (Plan DO Check Act) cycle was made popular by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. This is a scientific cyclic process which can be used to improve the process (or product). This is cyclic in nature and usually time boxed. Plan  This is the first stage of the process. During this step the team discusses the objectives, the process and the clear conditions of exit (conditions of acceptance). This stage sets the measurable and achievable goals for the team. DO Team works together to achieve the objective set in the planning phase. Team works with the set of agreed process. Check Once the implantation is done team regroups and verifies the output and compares it to the agreed conditions of acceptance decided during the planning phase. The deviation, if any, is noted down. ACT If any deviation in planned tasks is observed during the Check stage, a root cause analysis is conducted. Team brainstorms and identifies the changes required to prevent such deviations in future. Team also
Post a Comment
Read more

Product Backlog: Should you write everything in user story format?

I like user stories a lot. They help everyone talk the same language and results in a better product. User story alone does not constitute product requirement. User story is supposed to be a place holder for discussion which should happen between the team, Product Owner and the customer. This discussion result in a common understanding which along with the user story content is the product requirement. This format captures the essence of requirement without confusing the readers User Story is only one of the many different ways in which requirements can be represented. This is not mandatory in any Agile “process”. But many have made this mandatory. I have seen many spending countless hours trying to write the requirements in user story format when they could have easily written that in simple one-line sentence in few minutes.   I have seen team members refusing to even discuss the requirement until product owner rewrote the requirement in user story format. Once I
Post a Comment
Read more

Why is potentially shippable product quality important

Agile teams work in iterations. During this period, they are supposed to work on product increments which can be “delivered” at the end of iteration. But how you know that the correct product was delivered? Many teams have different kinds of acceptance criteria and Definition of Done (DoD). But in many cases, this “done” is not the real “done” there might be some testing pending, some integration or review pending or anything else which prevents the actual use of the product increment. Many of these teams will need additional iterations to finish hardening their products. Many teams will implement different types of “gates” or approval steps to move to next stage. The free flow of product will be interrupted. They might end up doing mini waterfall within their agile process. Many don’t even realize this. This results in poor quality and requires additional effort to “harden” the product. Potentially Shippable Product increment The acceptance criteria and DoD should be modified
Post a Comment
Read more