Essay: Discuss Management In Product Development Projects.

What is Scrum Framework?

Question:

Discuss About The Management In Product Development Projects?

Scrum refers to the framework used of the purpose of addressing the complex adaptive problems while being productive and creative while delivering the products to the possible highest value (online.vmedu.com, 2018). There are certain ground management in scrum responsible for governing this framework. This ground rules are nothing but the ground principles and the principles generally refers to the foundations which forms the base of the scrum framework. In any type of organization or project this principles can be applied.

The different principles of the scrum are to be followed in such a way that the projects become successful and this can be modified as well. This principles are in-negotiable and are to be applied according the SBOK. By proper intact of the principles the users gets the confidence of using the ability of framework so as to achieve success. These are the core guidelines and can be applied to any portfolios, programs, projects of any size products services and many more (online.vmedu.com, 2018). While implementation of the scrum it is important to know the definition of product as stated by the SBOK which states that product is something which can be considered as the service or other deliverable. The scalability of scrum is that it can be applied to any project of any university.

The empirical process control: This refers to the decisions which are made based upon the observations and the experimentations rather than the detailed and the predictive planning’s. This depends on three main principles and they are Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation.

Transparency: This allows all the facets of any type of scrum process to be observed by anyone. This provides a way of easy flowing of the transparent information throughout the whole organization which would be helping a lot in creating an “open work culture”.

Inspection: Scrum is associated with providing a point of inspection with use of scrum board and other information radiators which shows the processes of the scrum team after completion. Then comes the collection of feedback and the final step is the review.

Adaptation: Adaptation takes place when the Scrum team members and the stakeholders learn from the transparency and the inspection and then make certain changes so as to improve their work.

This refers to the fact that the team members are having the responsibility and the authority for figuring out the ways in which the “Prioritized Product Backlog” are to be converted to the products without any intervention of the stakeholders. The leadership style adopted in scrum is servant leadership(online.vmedu.com, 2018). Tis mainly emphasizes of the fact of achieving success by focusing on the needs of the team.

 This mainly refers to the working and interacting together of all the stakeholders so as to deliver great values as development of product is a shared value creation process. There are three core dimensions of collaboration and they are awareness (individuals knowing about each other’s work), articulate (dividing the works amongst team members and then collecting the whole effort to a whole) and appropriation (adaptation of the technology according to someone’s situation). The scrum core team collaborates with each other and the stakeholders so as to provide the highest value to the products and this collaborations takes place throughout the process(online.vmedu.com, 2018). Certain benefits are ensured by the collaboration like need of changes due to poor clarification of the requirements and many more.

The Principles of Scrum Framework

 This generally refers to the fact of providing the highest priority for satisfying the customers by making use of early and continuous delivery of the maximum amount of business value. This value based prioritization acts as a core principle due to the fact that it drives the structure and functionality if the entire scrum framework. This helps the project in earning benefits by making use of the adaptability and iterative development(online.vmedu.com, 2018). Scrum aims at delivering a valuable product or service to the customers on an early basis or continuous basis. User stories are prioritized and the list contained in the prioritized product backlog helps in fruition of the project.

In this case the time is considered to be the primary constraint which is responsible for allocation of a fixed time for different scrum processes and activities. This ensures that the team members are not associated with too much or too little work for a certain period of time so as not to expand their time and effort on such works which requires little amount of clarity. There are several advantages of this process and one such is efficient development process less overheads and many more (online.vmedu.com, 2018). Sprint is a time boxed iteration which exists for around 6 months and consists of things like facilitation guiding and protection from internal and external impediment by the scrum master. During this time the team is associated with conversion of the requirements into prioritized product backlog into shippable product functionalities. Sprint time box should be kept to four weeks so as to achieve success.

 This refers to the division of work into units so as to make them capable of producing a potentially shippable deliverable(online.vmedu.com, 2018). There are certain cases where the customer is not able to state the requirements and for such cases iteration development is used as this is much more flexible and ensures that changes can be made when requested by the customer.

Scrum is becoming much more important than the traditional project management technology. There are several reasons lying behind this rising importance of scrum. Traditional method involves the detailed upfront of the planning of the project. There are situations where the projects gets completed but the customer is not satisfied(online.vmedu.com, 2018). Whereas in scrum there is iterative decision making which focuses on customer satisfaction and also supports the collaboration of all the parties. Scrum is also sometimes contrasted with other project methods due to low upfront planning and scheduling of the activities. Scrum helps in expressing the knowledge rather than just the technical expertise.

 Adoption of governance model for agile implementation: It is identified that due to the adoption of governance model within agile implementation, number of challenges arises within the project (Dyba, Dingsøyr & Moe 2014).  The challenges that the project mainly faces is in maintaining responsibility, authority as well as in communication in context to the goals as well as strategies that are associated with the organization.

Utilizing accepted strategies of project management: The project manager sometimes faces difficulty in managing agile or hybrid project implementation due to the utilization of accepted strategies of project management.

Empirical Process Control

 Implementation agile processes as well as frameworks without proper tailoring: Due to improper tailoring of various agile processes or frameworks, it is very much difficult for the project managers to implement agile or hybrid project successfully (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). 

Measuring as well as tracking financials: The agile or hybrid implementation project faces number of challenges while measuring or tracking financials of the project.

 It is identified that with the utilization of agile two terms are generally in use that are scaling out and scaling up. It is found that scaling up is mainly concerned with the agile project methodology for developing large software system which is quite difficult to be developed by a small project team (Conforto et al., 2014). Agility for scale generally refers to scaling of agile methods in large project which mainly reflects on disciplined delivery of agile project. There are mainly eight scaling factors however not all the factors of scaling are applied within any of the given projects. Therefore it is very much necessary to remain flexible while scaling various agile techniques in order to meet the demands as well as needs of a specific project task.

 On the other hand, Scrum was mainly for small projects. Due to the utilization of Scrum methodology, the difficulty mainly arises due to the expansion of team as there is no co-ordination is present with the multiple teams (Serrador & Pinto, 2015).  Scalability in Scrum generally occurs in three different levels including projects programs as well as portfolios. Scalability in the scrum project is mainly achieved with the help of SoS (Scrum of Scrum) meeting. It generally recommends small teams however larger teams can also work if they are generally divided into small team who can meet occasionally in order to discuss the project they are working with.

 Agile software mainly consists of steps that mainly deals with release as well as development of software in small increments in a very much iterative manner by considering various types of feedback of the customers as well as users in order to adapt changes. It is identified that agile project management methodologies can be utilized in projects other than software development (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).  The generally utilizes the principles, tools as well as techniques of project management so that agile methodology can be utilized for making the projects successful other than software development. When utilizing agile methodology for non-IT projects following preferences needs to be required:

• Interactions as well as individuals over various tools as well as processes
• Customer collaboration over negotiation of contract
• Responding to various change over following a plan
• Business value over various comprehensive documents.

In order to successfully execute various non-software projects by utilizing agile project methodology, it is identified that number of agile principles are mainly used within non-software projects by setting proper expectations with the project stakeholders in order to bring proper project benefit (Stare, 2014).  It is identified that when agile is mainly applied to non-IT projects it collaboratively management the method of project work. Agile generally addresses proper conundrum in order to maintain as well as implement non-IT projects successfully while promoting creativity within the project.

In addition to this it is found that agile workflow strategies as well as tools are generally applied in order to execute the project successfully. It is applied in non IT project in order to bring productive collaboration on a proper continual basis and for minimizing project related risks (Hoda & Murugesan, 2016). By applying agile project management strategies to various non-IT projects helps in negotiating risks for combating project failure. Furthermore, it is analyzed that by promoting accountability and interaction, supporting collaboration as well as by encouraging repetition, agile project management methodology mainly provides an adaptive framework for various non-IT projects.

Conclusion:

The above report helps in concluding to the fact that scrum is a project methodology which aims at delivering of the products that are satisfactory for the customers and the requirements are in small iterative shippable increments. Another aim of scrum is to deliver products of higher value at a small interval of time by making use of prioritization and time boxing. Self-organization of scrum helps the individuals in doing the work so as to estimate and take the tasks ownership. So it can be stated that scrum is an updated theory associated with managing different types of projects.

References:

Conforto, E. C., Salum, F., Amaral, D. C., da Silva, S. L., & de Almeida, L. F. M. (2014). Can agile project management be adopted by industries other than software development?. Project Management Journal, 45(3), 21-34.

Dybå, T., Dingsøyr, T., & Moe, N. B. (2014). Agile project management. In Software project management in a changing world (pp. 277-300). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Hoda, R., & Murugesan, L. K. (2016). Multi-level agile project management challenges: A self-organizing team perspective. Journal of Systems and Software, 117, 245-257.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

online.vmedu.com. (2018). Log in for VMEdu courses. Online.vmedu.com. Retrieved 15 March 2018, from https://online.vmedu.com/Courses/Videos

Serrador, P., & Pinto, J. K. (2015). Does Agile work?—A quantitative analysis of agile project success. International Journal of Project Management, 33(5), 1040-1051.

Stare, A. (2014). Agile project management in product development projects. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 119, 295-304.