This great change in the distance between agency and client is something everyone has to get used to, but the impact is huge.
Scrum offers clients three significant advantages:
♦ Short time to market—Scrum is fast. In our experience, turnaround times are about half those achieved with waterfall.
♦ Quality—Scrum encourages a feeling of responsibility for all people involved and improves communication among disciplines. Thus the team becomes much more motivated, and big surprises are prevented. Scrum also allows for far more control over the final result. This all has a marvelous effect on the final quality of the agreed deliverables.
♦ Delivery assurance—Progress monitoring and evaluation are deeply embedded in the Scrum process. Therefore a Scrum team is able to guarantee that a product will be ready within a limited, short timeframe.
Scrum is useful…
♦ If your projects require a lot of reworking: When progressive insight occurs only in later phases, reworking becomes necessary. By bringing these phases much closer together, progressive insight is gained much earlier. The loops become shorter, and there is less loss.
♦ If projects often run over: There are hundreds of reasons why waterfall projects may run over. But most common ones are insufficient progress monitoring, paired with a limited learning capacity built into project organization. Scrum deals rigorously with both.
♦ If the different disciplines do not understand and/or blame one another: Putting everyone in a single room means that people really have to work with one another. Less physical distance automatically leads to less mental distance. We’re in this together!
♦ If designers design things that are difficult to build: We have all heard of artists who don’t want to make allowances. And while the magic of design is an important part of the creative process, at some point we all have to come back down to earth. Scrum (ultimately) makes this happen.
♦ If developers encounter problems implementing the delivered design: There may be many reasons for this. The design may be too outrageous. The scope or quality of the design may be insufficient. The technical or functional preconditions may be unclear. But the solution is often the same: bring people together and thus improve communication.
♦ If people in your organization slow projects down by constantly having their say: Scrum provides focus. Those who are not part of the process realize that it’s all systems go—for real. And this requires a certain level of autonomy. There’s no stopping the Scrum train!
Scrum provides…
♦ A foundation for your product: With the client as part of the team, you have a greater amount of useful information to base your work on. It is all about the “bandwidth”.
♦ Adaptability: With the project not entirely fixed in advance, and with an inspection and control system in place, you can make better use of ongoing progressive insight—regardless of whether this insight comes from the client or another member of the team.
♦ Visibility: Scrum makes your process, people, and motivation very transparent. Any pleasant surprises? They can be celebrated with your client. Any disappointments? Then you and your client can get through those together—and enhance your mutual understanding in the process.
2.5 When not to Scrum
When Scrum works well, it releases you from much of the overhead you may be used to with waterfall projects. This makes for a most enjoyable process, whereby common sense, craftsmanship and passion for content can surface. Commitment will be rewarded.
Nevertheless, Scrum is not for everyone. In some environments and for certain clients, Scrum is too fast, too isolating, or too centered on informal collaboration. Even in these situations, Scrum needn’t be dismissed entirely. Setting up a Scrum board, for example, is always a good way to get an overall picture. It all comes down to your organization’s ability to implement the method for their particular purposes.
Scrum is not useful…
♦ If your project requires a lot of thinking and realization: Scrum is speedy and aimed at “getting things done”. Depending on the task or the person, Scrum can be too speedy. It’s virtually impossible to let an idea simmer for a week or so, and then go back to it. But it is always possible to find room for brainstorming, ideation, radical concepts, and sparkling innovation.
♦ If the quality or seniority of team members is below par: Scrum is all about improvising, prioritizing, and making choices. It takes quality and experience to do all of this efficiently.
♦ If the client has difficulty making decisions: In waterfall, a client who hesitates causes delays. Parts of the product, for instance, may not be approved. In Scrum this would lead to an uncontrolled process, whereby all kinds of things get done—but none of them would be based on correct decisions. A good Scrum team will spot this and not irrationally carry on sprinting.
♦ If a client’s democratic sign-off policy cannot be breached: If clients are extremely democratic or have unclear decision making structures, there is a chance that the client’s team representative, or product owner, will receive insufficient mandates. When every little detail has to be discussed with the back office, the sprint soon slows down.
♦ If the client or supplier has a very formal culture: When team members are tied to extensive documentation or ‘Def’ deliverables between disciplines, it is at the expense of the parallel nature of sprints. The ability to continue working on semi-finished products, premises, and presumptions is what makes Scrum so efficient.
So…
Now you know how Scrum came about, what its advantages are, and how we have adapted it for the design & development world. If you decide to start Scrumming, move on to the next chapter: How to set up a project.
Happy Scrumming!
If you have decided to start scrumming, it’s time to start thinking about your project setup. Who needs to be there? On which days? For how long? Which room will enhance collaboration between team members, with all of their different skills and characters?
3.1 A project is made up of sprints
This book refers mainly to interactive media projects. These projects have an identifiable, often strategic beginning. And being within the interactive media domain, they are multidisciplinary in nature, with a variety of
