Skip to main content

Who orders the Spike? does the development team have to ask for permission from the Scrum Master?

Last post 08:43 pm June 17, 2021 by Ramon David Talavera
4 replies
03:20 pm June 17, 2021

Good afternoon,

Regarding spikes, I would like to know:

Who orders the Spike?

and

Does the development team have to ask for permission from the Scrum Master before attempting the spike?

 

Thanks in advance.


04:16 pm June 17, 2021

What do you understand a spike to be? Is it an activity needed to help better understand and further refine the Product Backlog, for example?


04:19 pm June 17, 2021

It depends on the goal of the spike in my opinion. 

if the goal is to find out something to be able to refine a PBI or justify a PBI its the product owner

If its is at the beginning of a sprint to find the best way to be able to meet the sprint Goal it is the developers. 

In my opinion it is never the scrum master how orders it but it could be the scrum master how suggests it.


04:37 pm June 17, 2021

Thanks for your kind responses. By Spike I mean a time-boxed experiment to gain information about a risk. Due to its nature (risk) if submitted like a user story to the product backlog it should be estimated and probably executed early as it is normally high-risk high-value.


04:53 pm June 17, 2021

Thank you very much Sven Lankreijer.


By posting on our forums you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.

Please note that the first and last name from your Scrum.org member profile will be displayed next to any topic or comment you post on the forums. For privacy concerns, we cannot allow you to post email addresses. All user-submitted content on our Forums may be subject to deletion if it is found to be in violation of our Terms of Use. Scrum.org does not endorse user-submitted content or the content of links to any third-party websites.

Terms of Use

Scrum.org may, at its discretion, remove any post that it deems unsuitable for these forums. Unsuitable post content includes, but is not limited to, Scrum.org Professional-level assessment questions and answers, profanity, insults, racism or sexually explicit content. Using our forum as a platform for the marketing and solicitation of products or services is also prohibited. Forum members who post content deemed unsuitable by Scrum.org may have their access revoked at any time, without warning. Scrum.org may, but is not obliged to, monitor submissions.