Context can help Manage Complexity
Don’t forget the time horizon of your desired value.
With the new Scrum Guide, the founders added the topic of “Why is this Sprint Valuable?” This should help those teams that are not already discussing the “Why.” Understanding why a Sprint is valuable will allow the Scrum Team to understand the context behind the work they are about to embark on.
Explaining “why” the next feature or piece of functionality is valuable to work on is a huge benefit to the Developers who are going to work on it. But it is just as important to know “why” this next feature is valuable to work on “right now”.
“Topic One: Why is this Sprint valuable?” — Scrum Guide 2020
It is easy to skip over the word “this” in Topic One above. But it is a crucial element. “This” can (and should) imply that we need to work on it now. Having the context around the time constraint the Team faces will allow them to manage any unforeseen complexity. A story that illustrates this happened to me just recently.
Before Christmas, we received several inches of snow. With all that snow comes the inevitable removal of it from our driveway. So “why” is that important? Well, since it was before Christmas, and this being a pandemic, Santa’s elves dressed as delivery people. These makeshift elves need to be able to have a way to get the gifts to our house.
But “why” am I clearing the driveway “right now”, at 5:30 in the bloody morning? Why not wait until it’s easier, warmer, and in daylight? Well, I need to make sure that my wife can get to work at the hospital on time. So that context helped me to understand the time constraint I faced. She had to leave by 7:15. From previous experience, that constraint is not an issue. With the snowblower, I can clear the driveway and be back inside drinking my coffee well before my wife needs to leave.
Context (n.) “the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.” — Google
“So, what’s the big deal?” you may ask. Well, this time I ran into some unforeseen issues. Due to a failure to keep up with maintenance (kinda like technical debt) my snowblower did not work. Additionally, what looked like a couple of inches of fluffy snow was, indeed, six inches of heavy, frozen snow. That complexity was not something I was expecting to encounter.
But that did not change my deadline. I could not go back to bed and wait until it got warmer and the Sun melted some of it first. I still had to clear the driveway. My wife had to get to work. I still had to do it “right now.”
So instead of clearing the entire driveway, I only had to clear “just enough” for my wife to be able to leave. She parks in the front-most garage. This context was important because I only needed to shovel about 60% of the driveway. Despite my impediments, I still was able to hit my goal on time and save myself a lot of back-breaking work.
Another example comes from a situation my former team faced. We worked on an email marketing platform. My team was very experienced integrating with third-party data platforms. We knew how to build them securely and what data was most needed for our “basic” integrations. By “basic”, I mean the minimal amount of data that 80% of our clients used for our services.
When our Product Owner came to us in Sprint Planning with the next integration, he explained “why” it was valuable for us to work on. An existing client of ours was migrating that third-party platform. Also, that client’s parent organization was moving all its brands onto it as well. So, it represented a good amount of Unrealized Value for our Sales team. The Salespeople were excited about this.
Our Product Owner also explained “why” it was valuable for us to work on “right now.” Our client was migrating to that platform in a few weeks. If our integration was not up and running, the client couldn’t use our services. That would cause them to lose out on the revenue our platform helped them generate. It could hurt our company when we tried to leverage the relationship to gain the other brands within that parent organization.
Based upon our previous experiences, and our initial analysis of that platform, the Team felt it could deliver our “basic” integration, and be back drinking our coffees, well before the deadline.
“Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential.” — Principle behind the Agile Manifesto
But, after we started, we discovered a lot of unknowns. The third-party’s documentation was not accurate. Also, not all the data we needed was available. And some of the APIs that we could use was still in beta. It was clear that we were not going to be able to have our coffee.
Thankfully, the developers understood the context around “why right now.” We focused just on the current client. Through discussions with them, we learned that they only needed the features that were helping them generate the most revenue. This allowed us to descope over half of the work we originally forecasted.
So instead of a “basic” integration like we hoped, we delivered “just enough” for our client. We delivered in time for their migration, allowing them continuous use of our services.
When working in complex environments, it is essential to understand “why” the work needs to be done. The addition of this to the new Scrum Guide verifies that. But just as important is understanding “why” this work has to be done “right now.”
