Scrum of non-product / service based lines (such as hosting)
Hi everyone,
I just made transition from a product team to hosting services (eg cloud computing), where a lot of the team's work falls on SaaS support type services like building out VMs and environments, setting up firewalls, etc. as well as dealing with incoming non-stop production issues.
The company has made a push for agile methodologies to be used across company and we are implementing scrum within our team. I've never managed services, let alone in an agile fashion, and cannot for the life of me find any useful material out there on the web.
Specifically, I'd love to know how I can manage services from a SM/PO perspective and how planning differentiates for a team who is constantly putting out production fires. If anyone can point me to a good resource whether literary, program, or individual, or even share your experience, I would love to hear it.
Thanks!
Scrum is focused on software development as a complex process. Supporting hosting services is quite another process.
I have heard the same type of question in another forum. The answer that was given was Srum-Ban. In my understanding this means combining Scrum and Kanban: leaving out some of the planning activities from Scrum and introducing the activity tracking and quality improvements of Kanban.
I wrote an article on using Scrumban for support work, but the context was one of having a Development Team that must also provide live support, rather than having a dedicated Ops team:
http://www.dzone.com/articles/getting-real-scrumban
Note that Scrumban isn't Scrum. However, Scrum *can* be used for Ops work, assuming that clear and meaningful Sprint Goals can be articulated.
Kanban is more typically used where a backlog consists of small and repeatable changes, and where there must be a continuous release of actioned work into production. In this context Sprint Goals and the associated Sprint time-boxing may be thought to offer little value. Spotify is one example of this in use:
http://www.infoq.com/articles/kanban-operations-spotify
DevOps is a related approach and there is a wealth of information about this on the web.
the day to day operation of a service line generally doesn't lend itself to Scrum. But, the improvements to the service do as these are project based. Another area Scrum is valuable is root cause analysis. You can build a ticket system to track problems and KPI's. You'll find certain questions/problems crop up regularly. Drop them into a backlog and solve them in a Scrum. Playbook the process using Kanban or something similar. Use Scrum to improve the playbook and product/service offering.