Six (6) steps to deal with new projects in Scrum

Context

The team is in the middle of the sprint and suddenly the Product Owner (PO) arrives from its weekly meeting with a stakeholder. He looks confused. Questions have arisen and in his mind the brand new idea/feature/improvement that could potentially bring more money/a new product line/service to the company is turning him crazy. Nobody is clear about this “new thing” but something needs to happen at the team level, in order to answer stakeholder expectations as soon as possible. But what should we (Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Development Team) should do? should we ask the scrum master?, but Scrum doesn’t tell me what to do and how to manage potential new projects?

Assets at this level

– A new set of ideas/proposals. A vague definition of something potentially similar to a poorly described project, sometimes with undefined goals

– Your desire to get it right this time.

How to do it:

1) Define business need(s) and requirements (from the idea to theme creation) until project description (what), business justification (why) and basic requirements (high level features) are completed.

Participants: Stakeholder(s) involved, Product Owner(s), If facilitation required the Scrum Master/Agile Coach.

Purpose: Business case is elaborated containing specific legal requirements, organizational and Technological needs, market demand, potential impacts and risks and other important criteria.

Outcome: Project vision (business need, initial scope)

Tools: Project Charter Template (completed up to the “Project Requirements” section)

2) Create a Scrum Master plan about these phase of the project.

Participants: Scrum Master (Responsible), The Product Owner

Purpose: Bring visibility to all stakeholders involved and create some awareness about what’s next for the team, regarding the new project.

3) Project charter (first draft) meeting

Participants: Stakeholder(s) Product Owner, Team member

Facilitated by: Scrum Master/Agile Coach

Purpose: Lay out the vision/theme for the release.

Outcome: Project charter (first draft) have been created.

4) Project Kick off meeting

Participants: Stakeholder(s), Product Owner, Development Team

Facilitated by: Scrum Master/Agile Coach

Purpose: Shared understanding about project vision/scope. Team have a loosely defined plan for developing the Sprint 0 deliverable and people responsible for it

Outcome: Defined plan for developing the Release Backlog

5) Brainstorming sessions

Participants: Stakeholder(s), Product Owner, Development Team

Facilitated by: Scrum Master/Agile Coach

Purpose: The list of features is sized and estimated (just enough information to be able to estimate size & complexity)

Outcome: Release Backlog (Estimated), Updated Project Charter

6) Project Approval

Participants: Stakeholder(s), Product Owner

Purpose: Ask and get approval from the authority agency.

Outcome: Project approved, in depth analysis and housekeeping started.

Tip: Meanwhile, this grace period is a good time to start doing the more in-depth analysis of the first group of development tasks, and any other housekeeping required to assemble the team and get them up to speed

The steps mentioned above, have been tested successfully in three scrum projects here at Seedbox Technologies.

In addition, I’m really visual and I love to create images and flows to explain ideas, so this is what I’ve been using to share the process inside of the company: