Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and inspection is one of the three pillars.
Each of the Scrum accountabilities participates in one or more inspections. If you feel that there are undesired variances for any aspect of your initiative, think about who could best initiate an inspection.
Inspection is about detecting undesirable variances in progressing towards agreed goals.
Let's take the Product Owner.
The Product Owner is typically closely involved in inspecting the Product Backlog and the Increment. He/she is also involved in inspecting how the entire Scrum Team is collaborating during the Sprint, including relationships, people and tools.
The Product Owner, together with other team members and stakeholders is evaluating the current state of the product, the value it brings, the capabilities it offers, and checks if this is indeed what is still needed in the product, what is still expected to reach the Product goal, what the gap is with what the market is asking for, and more.
The Product Owner further inspects, again together with the other team members how for example Product Backlog management can be improved. How can the team order better to serve the users? How can Product Backlog refinement be improved? How can we work closer together with users?
Summary:
Your Product Owner takes part in detecting undesired variances in both the Increment and the Product Backlog, variances with regard to the current and future state (near and long term) of the product.
Prompt:
Evaluate together with the Product Owner
- what improvements can be made to close the gap with market needs, and
- how Product Backlog management can be improved.
I hope you find value in these short posts and if you are looking for more clarifications, feel free to take contact.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the core concepts we are covering in this blog series, then surely check out our Professional Scrum MasterY workshop. We have some scheduled in the coming period.
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