Controlling meets agile
Hello everyone,
consider following scenario: I know, its not ideal, its rather "Scrum-but", but let me ask the question anyways
In a big company I am a SM for a newly formed remote Scrum Team which due to budgeting actually consists of two Product Teams having its own PO and own Dev-Members. So we have two POs + Dev Teams sitting in one Scrum Team working on one single Backlog. We have all meetings together. Ultimate goal in future is, to empower all Devs to be able to work on both products. I am well aware that those Teams "should" work in seperate Scrum Teams. But lets come to my actual problem:
There is a budget of lets say 1 million apples ;) decided on company level Product A should consume 20% and Product B 80% of that budget. You see where i am going? Not yet, then listen: ;) Its hard to put it into words, though.
The Investor (stakeholder) calculated himself a plan that on monthly basis the consumption of budget should be distributed 20/80. Which we are not meeting, because the devs cannot be assigned to one or the other product 100%. Additionally Product A (20%) has a critical milestone until May, but then the the workload for those devs will decrease. Product B (80%) doesnt have any critical milestones for the whole year. The PO´s discuss on Sprint basis which User Stories will be priorized into the next Sprint and they are fine with it, both Products are making good progress. Without keeping real track of budget, especially not on the 80/20 distribution.
So the stakeholder wants to have reports of how we make sure to meet the budget distribution. I dont know what to say rather than that he has to trust that the Products will be done as he wanted and that this is more important than keeping track of the exact distribution. Problem here: his BOSS BOSS wants to control this budget as well, who actually ist out my reach (or in other words, out of my league :D)
I hope you understand my dilemma.
Any ideas how i could go on with this topic?
Thanks,
Adam
Does the boss really wants to be sure the budget will be squander, or does he has some interest in the value and return on investment of the portefolio made of both products A and B ?
The Investor (stakeholder) calculated himself a plan...
Shouldn’t product planning be entrusted to Product Owners?
What's the expected outcome of your boss and his boss of a Scrum team?
How are the Scrum values affected with this construction?
How do your team member like this?
During reviews, how is the value vs expectation represented?
And, indeed like Ian mentioned, is the PO mandated to make these kind of decisions?
Your company wants to invest in two products, so I would assume that both products provide revenue. That is what investing is about, spending money to make more money.
Your company wants to spend 4 times as much money on product B than they want to spend on product A. So normally, I would assume that your company expects to gain (at least) 4 times as much value from product B. This could be any kind of value, such as profit rate, corporate image, market share, customer satisfaction, etc.
I would advise you to make this value transparent and add it to the Product Backlogs. Also, make the costs transparent. This will help your manager (I don't like the word boss) and stakeholders understand what they are asking you to do and adapt accordingly.
Any decent manager will make decisions that are good for the company. Spending 80% of the money on a product that gives 50% of the value is bad business.
Maybe you find out that you should stop working on product A altogether because it doesn't provide much value at all. Or maybe you find out that you should change to 50-50 or even 80-20 in favour of product A. You won't know until you generate sufficient transparency.
If your transparency shows that the current way of spending money is not advisable, but your manager and the stakeholder still want to focus only on cost, then the problem may not lie with them but with higher management. They too may be forced to focus on cost rather than value. As a Scrum Master, your responsibilities to the organisation include helping stakeholders with their challenges as well, if they form an impediment to your Scrum Team.
If the stakeholders of the two products are competing against each other and want to claim resources for their own stake, the PO can explain what the value of both products is for the entire company. Stakeholders that put their personal interests over the company interests need to be dealt with.
It could be that these stakeholders are told to do this by someone else, higher up in the organisation. This someone else is probably the actual stakeholder and you may have been talking to the wrong person.
Also be transparent how much the reports they expect from you are costing the company. The value of these reports will most likely be 0. Ask the stakeholders who is willing to pay for this.
As for the backlogs... Two products = two Product Backlogs = two POs. This could cause some planning issues, so you could consider having one person fulfill the PO role for both products. The products are small enough to be handled by half a Development Team, so one PO should normally be able to handle both. He probably spends that time negotiating with the other PO anyway.
The two Product Backlogs provide input for the single Sprint Backlog. The teams can pull PBIs from both backlogs during the Sprint Planning.
Great response @Henri.
@Adam, you said (which I have bolded):
actually consists of two Product Teams having its own PO and own Dev-Members. So we have two POs + Dev Teams sitting in one Scrum Team working on one single Backlog. We have all meetings together.
I would actually suggest you have two Product Backlogs for this. You have two Products, two POs, two Teams, so I'm not sure why you have a single Backlog.