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Chapter 03 - Scrum Aspects

34. Unapproved and Approved Change Requests

Now, the general way this is done is by establishing some type of change management process. In general, all change requests are unapproved until they've been approved. So we begin by having the customer submit some type of request for change. Usually, if you have a Scrum guidance body or some type of PM mode, they're going to establish a formalised process for that. And then you want to be able to establish what we'll call a "change authority," who gets to make the decision as to how we're going to handle certain kinds of change. Most small changes are approved by a product owner and then placed into the prioritised product backlog at the appropriate level of priority; for larger changes, this may involve the sponsor, program, or portfolio management. But regardless, once a change is approved, it now essentially becomes its own user story and needs to be placed into the prioritised product backlog in the place that makes the most sense for the business.

35. Flexibility vs. Stability

Now, a big part of what we're trying to do in coordinating and managing change is to balance the tradeoffs between two very good things. We want a stable solution, but we also want to be sufficiently flexible to be able to evolve the solution and the efforts of the team based on the differing priorities of the requirements and changes that customers would like.

So we can identify potential changes to be requested or approved, but they only get updated when the product backlog is updated. Within any particular sprint, the sprint backlog is explicitly fixed and protected, and it is, in fact, one of the fundamental jobs of a scrum master to protect the sprint and the scrum team in particular from people who would want to change the sprint. So when we think about the role of managing change, we want to be able to maintain this balance through the idea of iterative product development. At the end of this sprint, if we need to make a significant change and it needs to go to the head of the class, that's fine. But within this sprint, we're going to focus on effectively executing against the user stories we agreed to, to be able to produce and deliver those within the appropriate timeline.

We'll also use all of the other key techniques we've learned as scrum masters to carry out this work carefully with time boxed meetings, using appropriately cross-functional teams, looking at all aspects of the solution, and focusing on the work that we're doing based on value-based prioritization. So again, when we select user stories out of a product backlog, we are selecting the user stories that are the most valuable to the customer because the product owner has specifically told us so. If, based on their grooming activities and some changes, new changes go to the front of the class, those are going to be the first ones in the queue for the next round, most likely. Lastly, we want to be able to use continuous integration of our solutions to be able to integrate those changes in a way that allows us to both integrate their functionality and also refactor the code in a way that maintains efficiency and effectiveness in how our code works.

36. Integrate Change

In general, when we start looking at changes, they're going to be integrated into the product backlog, either during initial creation or during the grooming phase activities. If a change dramatically impacts a sprint, the product owner has a difficult question to ask. Do we need to wait until the next sprint? In general, unless it's extremely urgent or without that change, the sprint-relay results are completely useless. Unless it completely destroys essentially all of the sprint's value. The preference, wherever possible, is to let the sprint alone. You, as the Scrum Master, really are on the hook for protecting the team from significant changes during a sprint.

Now that said, if the sprint results are worthless, the sprint should be terminated, and we should start over based on the new prioritization. Okay? If the team determines based on their activities during a sprint that they can take on more user stories, the sprint can choose to add additional user stories, and the team can add those at their discretion. So when you think about your role as a Scrum Master, part of what we're going to be asked to do here is really to protect the sprint backlog and the work of the Scrum team.

Against that, we want to invite change, and we want to ensure that those changes are reflected in the prioritised product backlog so that each time we begin a sprint, we're beginning a sprint with our eyes focused on the things that are of the highest value to the customer. That said, unless this change effectively renders the entire sprint a waste of time, we should try to protect the sprint, let it finish, and then deal with the change in the subsequent sprint.

37. Lesson: Risk

In this next lesson, we're going to deal with risk. While it's not explicitly the exclusive job of the scrum master to manage risk, it's certainly our job to help facilitate how risks are identified, how risks are mitigated, and how risks are tracked and managed. Let's take a look at risk management within Scrum now.

38. Risks vs. Issues

Risks reflect uncertainty because, from time to time, things can happen that will affect project outcomes. Sometimes those will be positive effects. We might think of those as opportunities. Some of these may be negative. We might think of those as threats. Regardless, we want to have our eyes wide open about what's out there that we may have to deal with.

So as we work our way through any Scrum project, we want to be able to effectively identify risks. We want to be able to assess what those risks would mean for the project context, and we want to be able to appropriately manage our response to them. Okay, so the key factors you want to think about are really the same regardless of the risk management methodology that you utilize, because there are, I don't know, 50 or 100 different risk management methodologies in the world, and all of them are pretty similar.

What are the risks that we face? What's the likelihood or probability that that risk would be realized? What would it mean if that risk happened? Okay, so what does that mean in terms of money, time, and other types of bad or good things that could happen? And then, given that, what should we do? If it's an opportunity, how do we make it more likely we're going to get it? If it's a risk or a threat, how do we make it less likely that it's going to hurt us? All right, so by definition, risks are possible events in the future. They haven't happened yet, but they could. And so we want to be able to manage our response to them. On the other hand, we also have the notion of an issue.

An issue is something that has happened. It's already done; it's already happened. And so here we want to be able to identify how we're going to respond in the face of this thing that we didn't anticipate. All right, so let's take a look at an example here. So I may have a risk that training might not be done in time before going live, and that might affect my release plan, for example. On the other hand, I may have an issue because the funding has not been approved to do the training. So this isn't a risk that the training might not happen. The lack of funding is a problem. It's not going to be done. And then, of course, that may drive certain actions that we need to take to be able to respond to the issue that's out there.

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