What did they mean?
Hello everyone,
I need your opinion in the following two sentences of the new scrum guide as sometimes a single word can change the meaning of a sentence.
- Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured.
Which refers to the commitment or transparency and focus?
-
The Product Owner may influence the Developers by helping them understand and select trade-offs.
Select refers to the Product Owner or the Developers? Also understand what exactly?
Thank you,
Elizabeth
For 2, here is my take :
Select refers to Developers.
And understand the trade-offs;
(understand and select) the trade-offs.
Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured.
Which refers to the commitment or transparency and focus?
It refers to the artifact. Each artifact lends transparency and focus to progress, and affording each one a clear commitment helps to enhance this.
The Product Owner may influence the Developers by helping them understand and select trade-offs.
Select refers to the Product Owner or the Developers? Also understand what exactly?
It refers to the trade-offs involved in sizing Product Backlog items. The Developers are responsible for sizing, and may wish to consider the Product Owner's view of requirements complexity when deciding how much work needs to be invested. Usually they will seek to provide an MVP.
The Product Owner may influence the Developers by helping them understand and select trade-offs.
This is referring to the context of the conversation that happens when the Developers are estimating the size of a Product Backlog item, perhaps in Product Backlog refinement. The secret to sizing is that the conversation is usually more valuable than the number. Knowing the effort allows the Product Owner to make trade-offs as well.
I remember one Backlog refinement session where the Developers estimated a piece of work related to mobile web payment features (i.e. the Product Backlog items) to take several Sprints, and the Product Owner felt it was too risky to wait that long to get feedback from customers. A tradeoff made was by the Product Owner whereby the initial feature would only support Paypal (Paypal the MVP - Apple Pay and Square would be added to the Product Backlog for the future), and the developers prudently decided not to refactor a module until the data (usage metrics, NPS surveys) proved out customers valued such payment options. Both of these resulted in a lower estimate.