Seeing The Big Picture With Scrum

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

A common phenomenon happening in organizations implementing scrum is that something is missing – the big picture. People are saying “We used to have High-Level Designs – where are they?”, “We used to have an architecture before developing – where is it?”. The answer will usually be that as we are working with small batches we need to focus on what’s immediately coming up and so other things are getting neglected.

But this is a confusion. Nothing should be neglected. For sure we cannot neglect long-term thinking and planning.

Why are we losing the big picture?

The reason for this confusion is that scrum focuses on the iteration, on the short term. As depicted below.

In the above illustration (taken from Wikipedia) you can see that most of the action is on the right-hand side of the picture. There’s a big circle denoting the iteration (originally it said 30 days, I took the liberty of changing it to 2 weeks) and above it the 24 hours cycle.

Most of the attention is on the cycle of iteration. The scrum events/ceremonies (depending on your school) are all around the iteration.

What doesn’t get attention in most implementations is the arrow on the left, connecting the backlog and the sprint backlog. A lot of stuff is happening on that arrow, depending on the organization, for example:

  •       High-level design
  •       User Experience Design
  •       Reviews

What should happen before the sprint?

The thing that escapes many organizations is that this arrow is not directly related to the iterations but rather is an ongoing process. Something like this:

In addition to the process of the scrum team, there is an ongoing process of high-level designs, architecture, and more – things that usually take more time.

This process – backlog grooming – is where we are cooking the scope on low heat, preparing it for the boil of the iteration. This is where you have time to think, process, to look at the big picture. We shouldn’t overdo this or the scope will get spoiled, of course. We need to do just enough so it will be ready for the teams.

The people involved in this process will be product managers, architects, team leads, experts, and others, some of them from the scrum teams. During planning, some capacity of the teams should be reserved for this.

How should we manage this?

We usually recommend using the Kanban method to manage this process, from end to end. This will help you understand what’s going on around you and control it.

Here is an example flow used by many:

On the left, you can see what’s happening before development. As you see, what’s happening in the iteration is just one column – DEV, one stage in the lifecycle of items.

The idea is that we manage two streams: the iteration stream and the end-to-end stream.

Once you set this board, there’s no going back. Until that moment management was all the time concerned with the various teams’ progress. Once they see the big picture two good things happen: first, management raises their heads, looking ahead, handling big obstacles, and making strategic decisions. The second thing is that teams can finally work quietly without being bothered all the time by questions from management 🙂

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Introduction to Test Driven Development
SA
Daily Scrum
Retrospectives
Amdocs
Jira Plans
TDD
Certification
AI
Continuous Improvement
Change Management
Presentation
Story Slicing
System Team
Operational Value Stream
Kaizen Workshop
Lean Risk Management
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Systems Thinking
Agile Project Management
Agile Product Development
speed @ scale
Risk-aware Product Development
Agile Basics
Atlaassian
Code
Nexus
RSA
Agile India
Scrum Values
Agile Games and Exercises
Agile Mindset
Continuous Integration
Agile for Embedded Systems
LPM
SAFe DevOps
Agile Israel
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
Agile Project
Frameworks
Lean Agile Organization
Coaching Agile Teams
Tools
Continuous Deployment
Managing Projects
Lean Startup
Agile Program
Manage Budget Creation
PI Objectives
Legacy Enterprise
Elastic Leadership
Test Driven Development
predictability
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
Nexus and Kanban
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
Webinar
Implementing SAFe
Introduction to ATDD
User stories
Product Ownership
Risk Management in Kanban
Scrum.org
Lean-Agile Software Development
Agile Release Planning
Releases Using Lean
Agile Product Ownership
Sprint Iteration
Release Train Engineer
Rovo
Continuous Delivery
Scrum Master Role
Scrum and XP
An Appreciative Retrospective
Kanban Game
Advanced Roadmaps
Value Streams
RTE Role
Spotify
Kanban 101
Scrum
Scrum Master
SPC
Rapid RTC
Atlassian
Slides
Agile in the Enterprise
Keith Sawyer
Artificial Intelligence
speed at scale
WIP
chatgpt
GanttBan
Scrum With Kanban
Agile and DevOps Journey
Business Agility
SAFe Release Planning
AgileSparks
Agile Exercises
ALM Tools
AI Artificial Intelligence
Lean Agile
Lean Agile Basics
Effective Agile Retrospectives
EOS®
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
Pomodoro Technique
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Achieve Business Agility
Lean Agile Leadership
Agile Israel Events
Jira
Jira Cloud
Games and Exercises
Software Development Estimation
Sprint Retrospectives
Agile Outsourcing
The Agile Coach
ScrumMaster Tales
transformation
Lean Budgeting
POPM
Scaled Agile Framework
The Kanban Method
Scrum Primer
Limiting Work in Progress
Agile Assembly Architecture
Planning
Self-organization
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
ROI
Confluence
Tips
RTE
Agile Games
Nexus and SAFe
Quality Assurance
Legacy Code
lean agile change management
Agile Development
Scrum Guide
Lean Agile Management
Certified SAFe
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Nexus Integration Team
PI Planning
BDD
Agility
DevOps
ATDD
Agile
Built-In Quality
Agile Delivery
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
Professional Scrum Master
What Is Kanban
Development Value Streams
Implementation of Lean and Agile
Kanban
Sprint Planning
Nexus vs SAFe
Process Improvement
Applying Agile Methodology
NIT
Kaizen
ARTs
Continuous Planning
Agile Marketing
QA
Kanban Basics
Agile Risk Management
System Archetypes
Hybrid Work
Risk Management on Agile Projects
Product Management
Kanban Kickstart Example
Perfection Game
System Integration Environments
Reading List
ART Success
Iterative Incremental Development
SAFe
Jira admin
Video
Software Development
Portfolio for Jira
Enterprise DevOps
LeSS
Team Flow
LAB
Lean and Agile Techniques
Program Increment
Lean Software Development
IT Operations
Engineering Practices
Professional Scrum Product Owner
ATDD vs. BDD
Agile Techniques
Agile Testing Practices
Agile Community
Agile Release Management
Large Scale Scrum
agileisrael
Covid19
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart