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Would you still use Scrum in the following scenario

Last post 03:51 pm July 14, 2014 by Ian Mitchell
1 reply
Anonymous
10:19 am July 12, 2014

Hi,

I’m currently facing with the following issue.

The client that I work for has a product called Product X. Product X is a custom product created for Company A. What I’ve heard is that when Product X was created, it went hand-in-hand with stress, many months of long hours, overworked colleagues, burnouts, fights etc. Eventually they push Product X into production and now 1 year later we’re still doing some occasional bug fixing and RFC’s. But ok, this is all manageable and the bugs are getting lesser and lesser.
By the way, this was a traditional waterfall project.

Now we have Company B who wants to use Product X as well. Seeing that Product X was custom-made for Company A, a lot refactoring will need to take place. So basically what we offer Company B will be exactly the same as what we did for Company A.

Now the problem:
Company doesn’t care about the budget. Budget is not an issue. They do however have a very strict deadline. And no, my client works in a branch where the deadline can’t be messed with…
So what my team is facing now is fixed deadline and fixed features. Company B wants exactly what Company A wants, so delivering a minimal market feature is out of question.
I’ve been discussing this with the team and we’ve already concluded that it’s impossible (within normal working hours) for the team to deliver Product X on time.

What would you do?

- Would you still use Scrum seeing that most features are clear, everyone knows what to do and therefore all the Scrum events seems a bit overkill.
- Would you ask your team to do some serious overwork?


03:51 pm July 14, 2014

> - Would you still use Scrum seeing that most features are clear, everyone knows what to do and therefore all the Scrum events seems a bit overkill.

From what you describe, with supposedly clear requirements, I'd be more inclined to run a Kanban and put Company B in the driver's seat for backlog prioritization. Run very tight iterations of no longer than a week, so Company B get what they've asked for rapidly and in very small batches.

Essentially you are shifting the bulk of the risk back on to Company B and reducing your own exposure to about a week. In short they get what they've asked for. The difficulty could be in getting Company B to participate in the highly engaged manner required, each and every week. If they are desperate enough to meet the deadline though, I dare say they might be persuaded.

- Would you ask your team to do some serious overwork?

No.


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