I am proud to say more and more companies continue to implement Scrum and are really beginning to experience this product development cycle. Especially praiseworthy are their ability to plan and their use of commitment. And still: again and again a well-known phenomenon occurs, that is contradictory to Scrum and contradicts the above mentioned positive aspects.
The following situation: a forgotten proposal lands on the desk of an employee. Suddenly the customer’s demands must be ‘quickly’ realized by the development team. Underlined by the quote: “Guys, we must be quick, there is no time for Scrum.” Then everyone sits down together (in the best case) and discusses how to quickly meet these demands. Then everyone quickly decides the main points without using Scrum. As the highly praised Scrum takes too much time to implement. What does this mean? Scrum is only great, if you have time for a long period of preparation? But if you are working under a time constraint, there is no time for such decision making?
What does Scrum want?
Scrum would like to avoid quickly shoving tasks between other tasks to strategic planning and agitating. The Product Owner is essential for this. He knows what the deadlines are and can actually say no to an unexpected customer. I am not talking about a deadlock with customers, naturally this is an exception. Which quickly brings us to the responsibilities and tasks of the PO: He or she must keep customer deadlines, prioritize them in the backlog and allow the developers to process customer demands. This is no easy task, because usually it is not only the wishes and needs of one customer that need to be satisfied. A good Product Owner demonstrates a talent to organize well. And in addition he keeps in contact with customers in order to meet demands in a timely manner and to be available periodically for the developers. If the Product Owner is successful at this, he simplifies things for the developers. They then do not have to be called in at the last moment to put out fires or to complete the plan.
Gilda Feller, Scrum Consultant for bor!sgloger