Scope Changes: Calming Troubled Waters
Agile not only expects scope changes, it welcomes them. That is all very well when you have been working for the last few weeks on a product feature that the stakeholders now want to scrap or re-design. No matter how responsive one is to change, such an action can be demoralizing. The Scrum Master must ensure that the team member or members whose work has been turned topsy-turvy do not take things personally and smooth some battered egos. The impact of scope changes on the team are not often discussed, but they can have a significant negative impact on the team and some of the members.
A similar adverse situation is that where a user story for review does not meet the acceptance criteria, and is not marked as “done”. This also has a negative impact on one or all of the team members and can cause conflict between the team members and the Product Owner. The Scrum Master has to restore morale and mood in such a case.
Changes in Team Structure
While Scrum projects are short, and hopefully there is no change in the team during the project, this does happen, and can really set the team back, especially if the team member (or members) who left was popular and a great “team player”. Any new member (or members) who is brought in to replace them is an outsider and has to be integrated into the team. Hopefully the team does not go through a prolonged “forming” and “storming” phase, but it is very much dependent on the personalities and the established team dynamics, which have been unbalanced.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios