Cross-functional dev team and outsourcing

> Do I understand it right that outsourcing
> certain portions of the project is OK as long
> as the team remains ultimately responsible for those portions? 

Not if that would mean delegating part of the team's process to others where it cannot be subjected to inspection and adaptation by team members.

> Not if that would mean delegating part of the team's process
> to others where it cannot be subjected to inspection and
> adaptation by team members.

Could you just clarify what exactly should be subject to inspection and adaptation? Let's take a look at a practical example:

The team's working on a multilingual project. For the sprint backlog item to be completed, some of its data needs to be translated to 5 languages. The team don't have the needed skills, so the process needs to be outsourced to outside translators. The process is outsourced, so it can't be inspected or adapted. The translations that come in can be inspected, alright, but not adapted...

Could you help me understand how this scenario fits in with the scrum framework? Thanks!

Suppose that there was an error in one of the translations. Because the team do not have the necessary translation skills they are not in a position to assess the increment for quality, spot the error, and fix it. Inspection and adaptation of the process is thus compromised and the faulty increment will be passed further down the value chain. Once the error is eventually spotted it will be harder and more expensive to fix than if it was identified and remedied by those responsible for doing the work.

Ok, that makes sense, but... according to the guide, Scrum is a framework for developing complex products. Translation is just the tip of the iceberg; complex products will have many problems that a small team will not know how to inspect and adapt personally.

If we can't outsource translations to a translation agency, a SEO audit to a SEO expert or a complicated server setup to a qualified server admin, what are we supposed to do with those tasks?

If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate a simple, practical answer that I could understand:

You're a part of a development team and you need to translate something to, say, Thai. You don't speak Thai, and there are no Thai speakers that you can bring in to join the team. What do you do?

The Development Team must explain to the Product Owner that they are not in a position to action those items on the Product Backlog which require an ability to speak Thai.

In Scrum, the Development Team wholly own their Sprint Backlog and work must therefore be negotiated into it. The Development Team are not obliged to accept Product Backlog Items, and must be careful not to do so if they are unconfident in their ability to action them.

This might be realized, for example, in a Planning Poker session. Team members would play a question mark card for any PBI's requiring a knowledge of Thai. This indicates that those items cannot be estimated by the team and inducted into any of their Sprints. It is then up to the Product Owner to modify the Product Backlog in such a way that work can in fact be actioned by that team and a potentially releasable increment created.

The PO may choose to find another team with a knowledge of Thai who can action the Product Backlog in whole or in part. In practice it is normal for multiple teams to collaborate in creating Potentially Releasable Increments as the skills are often varied and products can be complex. A PO must therefore be able to work with multiple teams when creating a product using Scrum at scale.

Thank you for the explanation, Ian. Things are getting clearer, but we're not there yet :).

In one of the projects I managed (non-scrum) we had to create the software, translate it to 20 languages, set it up on several servers, create some pieces of hardware that had to be outsourced to third-party companies and set up some offices and transport.

If that project was done in Scrum, the development team would create the software, but who would take care of all the rest? Let's face it, the PO wouldn't be looking for 20 Scrum teams to do the translations. That's what translation agencies are for. There also wouldn't be a Scrum team with the set of specialized skills and tools to create the hardware, A hardware company would need to be contracted for that. The same with the server contract, the logistics contracts, the real-estate contracts, the equipment supply contracts, etc.

Now, it's a complex project and Scrum should be able to handle it. I'm just not sure how...

Is the Product Owner supposed to handle all that procurement, risk and communication? Doesn't that go beyond the PO area of expertise and responsibility?

Do we hire an additional person, an ol'-style PMI project manager who is trained to handle it? Or should we get a PMP-certified Product Owner?

The PMI-style project manager's responsibilities include managing scope, stakeholders, time and quality, which is exactly what Scrum's Product Owner does. But the project manager also handles integration, cost, human resources, communications, risk and procurement, which makes him or her qualified to handle the external contracts.

So it looks to me like theoretically the project manager could also be the product owner and thus handle the entire project - part of which would be leaving the Scrum development team to do their stuff and create the software the Scrum way. But does that even fit in with the Scrum theory?

So here's a new assessment question for you:

What do we do with the procurements and the risk for the project described in the second paragraph of this post?

1. Have the Product Owner handle it.
2. Get a project manager, make him a product owner and have him or her run the applicable parts of the project in Scrum.
3. Add an additional project manager, who's not a member of the Scrum team.
4. None of the above. (Please, feel free to elaborate...)

Thank you for taking your time to explain this.

> Is the Product Owner supposed to handle all that
> procurement, risk and communication? Doesn't
> that go beyond the PO area of expertise and responsibility? 

- The procurement of resources or capabilities that a team cannot supply, but which are needed for creating Product increments...yes, the PO would be responsible for that.
- The risk around negotiating & releasing team deliverables that satisfy stakeholders is also the PO's responsibility (but not in-sprint development risk).
- Communication is partly but not entirely the PO's responsibility (it is reasonable for Development Teams to collaborate on making a release even though one does not delegate to another).

The PO is responsible for the Product, and must be able to release the work done by one or more Development Teams as valuable product increments. This may require an understanding of how PBI's from a product backlog should be brought together by multiple teams in order to effect a release. This is in fact the usual situation with complex products.

> What do we do with the procurements and the risk
> for the project described in the second paragraph of this post? 
>
> 1. Have the Product Owner handle it. 

Yes, if no one team is in a position to do all the work then the PO is responsible for finding a remedy, such as co-ordinating the work of multiple teams in order to facilitate the release of valuable product increments.

> 2. Get a project manager, make him a product owner
> and have him or her run the applicable parts of the project in Scrum.

Absolutely not. The focus is on releasing a product incrementally under the guidance of an informed owner...not on trying to arrange "project" responsibilities. Moreover, product ownership is a skill that is vested in appropriate individuals...it is not a quality that can simply be assigned.

> 3. Add an additional project manager, who's not a member of the Scrum team. 

There is no notion of a project in Scrum, only of a product. Hence there is no Project Manager role, but there is a Product Owner role. Product Ownership involves a special skill set, including the ability to handle complex products and the deliverables of multiple teams at enterprise scale.

That's clear, thanks for explaining it, Ian. Next stop: study more about the Product Owner role :).

Well yes you can outsource some of the portions but in outsourcing there's always a limitations and I agree to what Ian Mitchell said. You need to speak to the owner that we need to outsource this and they will be the one who can do that because the team is limited only to a set of skills. If you can explain it clearly and talk about it and communicate it well i think this will end up good. Just my two cents.





Regards,

Yazmin Barajas, Outsourcing Marketing

OBP Business Process Outsourcing Services