How to use Scrum/Agile with a remote customer?
Background:
The current project is new Scrum and has just started development. The project consists of three different organizations.
- Organization 1 houses the development teams which are 6 teams of roughly 6-8 people.
- Organization 2 are “user representatives” (they claim to know what the end users want and are their voice) but this organization is really comprised of developers of the legacy system no actual users.
- Organization 3 is responsible for the money and decides what they will fund in terms of capabilities and enhancements.
Key Notes:
- There is a product backlog with requirements to replicate the legacy system and requirements that will add the most value to the customer.
- Organization 1 can’t work on anything that doesn’t exist in legacy today.
- Organization 2 and 3 (which are the customers) are co-located but are thousands of miles away from any development team.
- Organization 2 was told to be the product owner but are forced to write requirements for a legacy system that they completely hate.
- There are a lot constraints put on implementing Scrum due to the nature of all organizations being Government agencies.
Problems:
- How do you efficiently implement scrum with co-located development teams but a remote customer?
- In my opinion we are in a weird scrum-waterfall approach currently. We haven’t adopted one or the other.
- How do you use Scrum when you have legacy requirements?
- Currently we are being told to replicate the legacy system then focus on adding value to the user (This could be due to a lack of understanding Agile/Scrum principles).
- How do you break the waterfall mentality within a Government setting?
- They are writing requirements multiple releases ahead without having a conversation with the development teams. The stories are usually poorly written and are posted to JIRA and they won’t they conversation to happen over the tool which adds confusion, unnecessary complexity, and goes against the manifesto.
- The customers are almost always in meeting and the development teams have to consistently work around their schedule to get answers to questions, etc.
Any feedback to these problems are greatly appreciated. Also this being my first time posting if there is any feedback on how to format better or anything of that nature I would also appreciate that.
Why is Scrum being considered in this situation? Who wants to use it, and why? What are their expectations?
All organizations wanted to utilize Scrum due to all the shortcomings of the legacy system. Some of the key shortcomings of the existing system:
- They used waterfall which caused the project to go over budget and under deliver
- Any capability that was delivered didn't necessarily add value (No interaction with end users)
- The system as a whole consists of band-aid fixes
The expectations in short is to focus on continuous delivery and getting rapid feedback from the actual end users.
"Communication is the key."
Participation from involved parties is highly recommended in Scrum. Without communicating to each other , it would be impossible to deliver quality product. As a scrum master, you need to make sure that everyone (scrum team/Stakeholders/customer) is aware of importance of Scrum and how does it help them to do better job in their field. Once they know the importance, they might start contributing.
All the best !!!!
The problem with this is two of the Organizations want to make the transition. Refering back to my original post Organization 2 is very against the idea and is doing everything possible not to adopt the new culture.
- How have people effectively transitioned when there are opposing parties?
Scrum is being considered due to the shortcomings of the legacy system. The expectations are to delivery a working product frequently to the end users so that we don't replicate legacy.
- A traditional waterfall approach was used during the legacy system.
- Over budget, lots of useless capabilities that don't add value, and the legacy system as a whole consists of band-aid fixes now.
- Continuous delivery wasn't utilized therefore it neglected a lot of user feedback.
All organizations wanted to utilize Scrum due to all the shortcomings of the legacy system.
Isn’t that incentive enough to overcome the “waterfall mentality” you refer to?
If not, who can provide the sponsorship needed for deep organizational change, including structural change, and establish a sense of urgency for it? Are the chief executives of each organization keen to adopt Scrum, and to overcome the various problems you describe?