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How to apply scrum to a small team working on multiple small products

Last post 09:00 am November 25, 2022 by Bhawana Bhat
3 replies
01:50 pm June 16, 2021

Hi

The Scrum Team in my organisation (an NHS Trust, UK) leans towards working on multiple 'small' products in a single sprint. For example, our Patient Administration System is semi-configurable, and we might have multiple small requests to update form x, add form y, or write z report. These enhancement requests usually only take one Dev a day/few days to work on. We might also have on our books a number of apps or services for multiple different requestors, the work for which may span multiple sprints. Furthermore, we don't have a PO in the team, and as the team's SM (it's a new role for me) I'm trying to convince the team and manager that "we're not doing Scrum if we don't have one". We're fairly new to Agile/Scrum (6 months) so still learning the ropes.

My heavily loaded and ambiguous question is how can we apply Scrum in our team/our organisation? We find a lot of value in the Scrum framework so I'm conscious we don't want to abandon Scrum altogether, but the types of requests aren't big - at most they would be used by a subset of the organisation we work for (or partner organisations).

Grateful for any hot tips, guidance, or advice :-)

Marianne


08:41 pm June 16, 2021

we don't have a PO in the team

...

We find a lot of value in the Scrum framework

Who's "we"? How is "value" being described and accounted for?

the types of requests aren't big

The servicing of even the simplest requests can present a complex challenge, if there are enough of them to make predictability uncertain. Sprint Goals can be flow-based (e.g. establishing a reliable Service Level Expectation); they do not always have to be feature-based.


09:12 pm June 16, 2021

Find someone who can take the roll of product owner

some questions that can help:

Who is requesting the Projects?

Who is sponsoring the team?


09:36 pm November 23, 2022

Marianne,

curious to know what did you end up doing in your case ?

Did you end up playing the dual role of a PO and SM ?

Which Agile methodology did you end up using ?


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