Recently, one manager approached me for advice on scrum practices which I was happy to assist with. This manager had a request to build some new features and integrate the same with the existing product. She was also looking to develop these new features using Agile software development with Scrum. All was good with me so far. What I found a bit unusual was this manager only had one person @ 60%capacity to work on the scrum. The manager herself would play role of a scrum master as well as a product owner.
My first thought was does she even have a Scrum team, a team of just one? However, talking further with this person and understanding what she was looking for, I thought one person scrum might make perfect sense too. She was looking for predictability on how long it will take to get this project done with one person working at 60%. Secondly, she also wanted to make a case to management that this project might not be one person effort and would need multiple folks to pull this release off. So, scrum made perfect sense for both her concerns. For now, I have asked her to do capacity planning, list sprint goal, conduct planning meeting, and finally demo at end of the sprint to demonstrate what was achieved to management. Only time will tell how successful or not so successful she was. However, I am inclined towards saying one person Scrum team is a real scrum team and a lot can be accomplished by this one person army.
I have posted this blog in scrumdevelopment forum and it has generated some really good discussion.
5 comments:
Very cool! Yes, much of the processes in SCRUM you can throw out or reduce when you only have 1 or 2 people, but I have used SCRUM methods myself on very small projects with success.
Josh Nankivel
pmStudent.com
The only thing I think a little bit weird is that in the daily meetings, what the person says is a report to the Scrum Master.
a developer, a customer, and a timebox where the developer is uninterrupted to get the best work done. Sounds like what scrum was founded off of. That 1 person must be a cross-functional rock-star though (DB, Analyst, programmer, domain knowledge, etc)
Thanks Josh and Amanda for posting your comments - I really appreciate it.
I agree Amanda daily scrum meetings might add too much value and would come across more of an overhead. The scrum master can look at xplanner updates and see the progress individual is making on a iteration. The other thought I had was sending daily update on 3 questions, and yet other is just set a common protocol between Scrum Master and the one person team to keep informed on any red flag issues.
I have found a standup with even one developer to be valuablel. 60% availability means - there's the other 40% that would be spent on other work and there could be emergency situation in the other projects which might be communicated in a standup
I have done "x" since the last standup. But I am not planning to do anything on this project till the next standup as I have to work on the other project. Nothing stopping me.
In my case, I have some sort of influence on the other 40% work also - so I can always tell whether it's ok to not work on this project at all till the next standup or if I need to make some alternate arrangement for the other projects or simply let them wait.
Post a Comment