How to handle Scrum process when it come to multi projects deadlines.
Hi Sagar here,
I'm working as a SM in my current organisation and trying to implement scrum process in my organisation.
My company is the product base company so through single code base platform we are delivering it to multiple clients.
I have implemented scrum process to the extent but facing difficulty when we are planning a sprint.
As we are in product base, so at time of sprint planning we are taking highest priority items from multiple projects and create a sprint backlogs with 5 weeks sprint.
The sprint duration takes 5 weeks as we have 100 clients and if I take 2-3 items in sprint backlog than there will be around 200 committed backlog items in sprint.
So My first query is how we gonna handle sprint planning process if the client figure move to 1000 in future, if I take 1 priority items from product backlog than there will be 1000 work items in sprint backlog so how to handle that ??
Next query is lets say I have created 5 weeks sprint, now as we are taking multiple projects work items in one sprint so there might be possibility like some project will have less items in sprint lets say 3 man days work items than why client or PM will wait for 5 weeks to get it release ?
Please advise me how to tackle such situation.
Regards,
Sagar Vyas
As you are doing 5 week sprints, you have not implemented scrum as a sprint is supposed to be 30 days or less.
A sprint should have a sprint goal that is aligned with a product goal, so I do not see how a sprint can include PBIs from multiple product backlogs.
A product should have one Product Owner, one Product Backlog, and at least one Scrum Team. A Scrum team should not be working on multiple products at the same time, as this will ruin their focus among other things.
5 weeks sprint.. 200 committed items..100 client priorities.. What is your team size ? How many POs you work with ? What is the need for sprint ?
This situation doesn't make much sense. If this is a product-centric organization, why is work being taken to appease different clients? In a true product-centric organization, the product development organization decides what to work on and how to allocate resources. Sometimes, that means that wishes and demands from some customers are deprioritized or declined in favor of work that is more impactful. Feedback from customers and users of the product, competitor analysis, sales data, and other inputs may help make the decision about what is the next most valuable thing to work on.
I'd start with understanding what it means to be a product-centric organization and the capacity for the current team to take on work.
From there, you may want to look at things like your Sprint duration and release cadence. Although there's nothing necessarily wrong with an iteration length of 5 weeks, that's not Scrum. Some frameworks and methodologies do support longer iteration lengths, but it would be good to evaluate if that's truly the best to support the key stakeholders. The ability to separate release cadence from iteration length may also be important to ensure that work that takes a few days isn't waiting many weeks before it can be demonstrated or delivered and feedback received by the team.
How many Products are there? If there's just one, why is the Product Owner finding it so difficult to manage these client relationships, and to order their work effectively on the Product Backlog?
I'm thinking the PBIs may not be development of the Product, but support tickets? Why are customers entitled to a number of items every Sprint?
Anyway, you need to get the length of the Sprint to the best length for the team to plan, get work to Done, and to be able to inspect and adapt. Not to the amount of items so everyone gets an item in the Sprint.