Scrum and Top management

Selling Scrum to the top management is a tough job. Although Scrum is an increasingly popular Agile methodology, it is hard to sell as change is mainly about people and how they cope with it. Managers might defend the present system by saying that its already working fine so why ask for change. However, they must realize the potential that implementing Scrum promises. In a traditional waterfall system, issues such as delayed estimation and delayed releases with less than expected results are prevalent. As team members are reassigned to other projects, delays become inevitable. Emergency changes after a release may result in a faulty product as there is not enough time to test. Scrum can help an organization reach its full potential even if it is already doing relatively well in a traditional set up.
Selling Scrum to the top management of an organization is a tough job but if we are to go by the trends, it might just be getting easier. In a survey conducted in 2012, it was found that 80% of all Scrum adoption in organizations was initiated by the senior management. The survey also found that after the Scrum Master, the top management such as the VPs, CEOs and Development Managers were the most knowledgeable about Scrum. The survey results show how crucial it is to spread awareness about Scrum within the top management.
The Declaration of Interdependence (DOI) can be used effectively to convince the top management to adopt Scrum. It tells us how various objectives can be achieved by certain actions. Firstly, an increase in the Return on Investment (ROI) can be achieved by focusing on delivering the features a business wants. Consistently delivering results beneficial for business will boost a project’s validity and credibility, which will in turn make the business receptive to processes and methods adopted in a project.
The ownership of the project is shared with the customers and they are involved in regular interactions with the project teams. This leads to more reliable results driven by business than when requirements are gathered upfront and there is very less interaction subsequently.
Scrum allows for planning in short iterations which facilitates adaptation to changing requirements which is characteristic of software projects. Time and resources are saved by not formulating a comprehensive plan which may need to be changed any way.
Self-organizing teams in Scrum are empowered to take ownership of problems and persevere to solve them creatively. They are more productive and share responsibility for the success of a project.

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Product Backlog Prioritization

The Scrum aims at delivering maximum business value in a minimum time span. One of the most effective tools for delivering maximum value in the short duration of time is prioritization. Scrum, uses Value-based Prioritization as one of the core principles that drives the structure and functionality of the entire Scrum framework-it helps projects benefit through adaptability and iterative development of the product or service. More significantly, Scrum aims at delivering a valuable product or service to the customer on an early and continuous basis.
While prioritizing, following three factors are considered:

1. Value
2. Risk or uncertainty
3. Dependencies

Thus prioritization results in deliverables that satisfies the requirements of the customer with the objective of delivering the maximum business value in the least amount of time. During prioritization risks and various performance issues will be closely analyzed, giving an early visibility regarding various problem areas which would surface later in the project.
The Product Owner is responsible for getting the Product Backlog ready and prioritizing the items in the Product Backlog. Once the Product Owner has received the business requirements from the customer and written these down in the form of workable User Stories, he needs to work with the customer to understand which all requirements are of maximum business value and needs to be accomplished first. Such user stories would take the top spot(in terms of priority) in the product backlog. The Product Backlog items should be ordered in such a way that the requirements with maximum business value would be completed first.

Sometimes, a customer may insist all User Stories to be of high priority. While this might be true, even a list of high-priority User Stories needs to be prioritized within the list itself. The Scrum Master and the development team will use the Product Backlog as the basis for planning the Sprints based on the priority of the items listed. The Scrum Team also informs the Product Owner about any dependencies that arise out of implementation. These dependencies must be taken into account during prioritization. Dependencies limit the freedom to prioritize the product backlog and therefore dependencies should be sorted out wherever possible.

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