Keeping the Customer informed and Involved
Scrum is a very collaborative approach to product development; the customers and other stakeholders are informed of the progress of the product development via Review Meetings, which are normally held at the end of each Sprint. Transparency is highly valued in Scrum, and any stakeholder is welcome to visit the scrum team area, where artefacts such as the Burndown Chart indicate the latest progress. Stakeholders have already interacted with the Scrum team when the user stories were being developed, so there is already a rapport between customer and service provider.
Justification of the Effort
Even the best-planned projects may fail for a variety of reasons; perhaps the product being developed has become obsolete or market sentiment has changed. Unlike traditional projects, where the project is usually completed before a decision to pull the product and shelve it rather than take it to market is made, Scrum is very agile in this respect.
Again, it is the Product Owner who makes this call and he can make it at any time during the project, even mid-way through a Sprint. This can be a temporary halt, where the project is reassessed and possibly re-geared or recalibrated before continuing, or it can be cancelled completely. What happens in this case is that the business justification that was present at the start of the project is no longer valid, and it makes economic sense to stop the project as soon as possible. In this way, financial and resource costs are minimised and freed up for another, more viable project. In this way, although there was some spend on the project, the early halt has avoided further outlay.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: