SCRUM Integration Challenges

Scrum is a methodology emerged in 1990's mainly to dealt with management of production work. It has observed to be having significantly occupied software development industry, however management professional from other departments like marketing, IT, Sales etc. are also keenly taking interest in implementing SCRUM. Scrum apparently looks to be a very simple approach, easy to implement for any team without spending many resources, tools and money. None the less, once implemented properly,it reflects tremendous increase in productivity and employee satisfaction. However, though there is willingness to accept SCRUM , organization has to struggle with multiple challenges in establishing SCRUM into their organization.
SCRUM as a Methodology
Scrum is a methodology for a team to carry out day to day work in incremental manner of iteration cycles of specific days,weeks etc. It means a work to be done is decided at the beginning of the cycle and team meets daily to give individual status updates and at the end of the cycle the set goal of iteration is achieved. These teams are self organized, self motivated means they decides workstack for themselves daily keeping in mind their ultimate goal to be achieved at the end of iteration.
Myths about SCRUM Implementation
There are many myths about SCRUM implementation which sometimes makes organizations to give up early in their implementation attempt.
# SCRUM is not for big organizations as they have too many dependencies and integrations.
# Leaders and Managers loose their roles as SCRUM teams are self managed.
# SCRUM can only be applied for time-material projects.
# SCRUM is very simple, can be learned from book and doesn’t require any practice or training.
# It is an extra headache to organize daily,weekly,monthly meetings over existing workload etc.
# Big organizations have diversity of architectures,development/management standards, tools and so SCRUM is not for them.
Though these myths looks like facts apparently, if SCRUM is implemented as a planned organizational process change, these can be overcome with patience and by implementing innovative ways suitable for organization culture, structure and acceptance.
Challenges in SCRUM Implementation
SCRUM implementation is not an easy approach, one has to dealt with many aspects, such as people interests, scrum parameters like meeting duration, iteration cycle time, userstories selection, prioritization criteria and adjusting all these with organization’s goal and ultimately with customer satisfaction. The challenges are at team level when you are implementing SCRUM for a particular team and Organization wide challenges when SCRUM implementation is to be achieved across the whole organization.
Challenges in establishing a SCRUM within a team
A scrum team has roles like Product owner, SCRUM master and team as well as parameters like team size, iteration priorities, cycle time,velocity, no of meetings and duration etc. Each of these has its own challenges and also contributes in creating challenging scenarios while achieving successful SCRUM.
1. Bad SCRUM Master
SCRUM Masters responsibility is too serve the team’s needs. Normally a SCRUM Master should be handling only one team. Too many teams with one SCRUM Master makes his job tougher. A SCRUM Master is a person who can be a mentor for SCRUM lessons for rest of the team and can increase the maturity level of SCRUM. A SCRUM master who doesn’t understand team’s pitfalls, requirements, difficulties in achieving goal and can not keep team motivated towards its goal is less useful to team as SCRUM Master.
2. Bad Product Owner
A bad product owner does not have a vision, business plan or a clear release roadmap.
Unavailability of product owner is often an issue in SCRUM. Most of the time once Sprint planning meeting is over or prioritized list of backlog is prepared, product owner assumes that team is self organized to take it up on its own, however product owners presence is important as it helps team to get the clear picture on sprint goals, priorities and any doubts on requirements they raise during sprint duration. If product owner is too much occupied consider having an authorized intermediate role or an authorized person who can act as a virtual product owner in his absence.
3. Too large team size
Ideal team size for SCRUM could be between 3 to 7. Too big team size creates chaos and it becomes difficult for team members to co-ordinate with each other. It also makes SCRUM Master’s job more complex and team looses its self organization in the process. So if team is very big consider breaking it down into smaller groups on the basis of functionality, module etc. SCRUM of SCRUMs technique is useful in such cases.
4. Too long or too short Iteration cycle time
Long iterations give enough time to team to work on fixing bugs and finding innovative ways to achieve the targets. Team is less pressurized and less occupied in meetings and find time to gel with each other well; while short iterations keep team moving towards goal, keep them tuned and synchronized towards the goal. An iteration time 1-3 weeks is considered as ideal, however teams may choose a suitable cycle time depending upon nature of the work and organizational demands.
5. Quality Issues
As SCRUM is a cyclic approach and team has obligation to deliver something in short time as per the scope decided in sprint planning meeting, the deliverables often have quality issues respect to code, functionality etc. This can be avoided by giving undue importance to Quality throughout the sprint, the scope of the required feature can be divided,reduced for current sprint and can be added to next sprint if required, however the motive should be to deliver 100% functional, quality product.
6. Module Integration Issues
In most of the organizations testing team is separate and individual modules out from each iteration are tested at the end of the release uncovering integration issues at later stage. To avoid this delay each team should have a Tester assigned to it, who can dedicately test all the deliverables from sprint and work closely with developers to uncover the faults early in release cycle.
7. Absence/Ineffectiveness of Retrospection
Restrospection meetings which are held at the end of every sprint are given less importance or the action items from these meetings are not taken seriously. A dedicated person from the team can follow up on these actions and team’s performance can be measured sprint after sprint to perform better. These meetings are to be taken seriously by team as well as product owner.
8. Infrastructure Issues
The team's sitting arrangement also contributes to the working environment of a team.The team should have access to all the required tools and resources to progress with their work without disturbances. SCRUM master has this role of facilitator to ensure all the basic needs of team are satisfied to deliver work on time.
9. Working Environment/Less motivated teams
All the above factors may contribute to poor working environment or less motivated teams. Following measures can help to increase the morale of employees. Increase the visibility of team’s achievements, contribution across the organization through e-mails, wall notices etc. Invite related teams for sprint demo to encourage the employee morale and sense of achievement. Organize a small gettogether along with food at the end of every sprint cycle or release cycle. Declare an award such as “champion of the sprint” etc to motivate team to give its best.
10. SCRUM Training
SCRUM training is important. One can not expect a newly joined team members to start working with already established SCRUM team with same zest and motivation as that of others on the team. Every member of team should be given a well planned formal training so that he understands the tactics of SCRUM well in advance and do not practice it with his preoccupied assumptions.
Challenges in establishing a SCRUM across the Organization
When a SCRUM integration is to be achieved across the organization, in addition to above mentioned challenges there are few more organization wide challenges which come across. Few of these are listed below:
* Aligning Iteration cycle times from various departments.
* Mutual co-ordination between Deapartments.
* Establishing an organization level wave for SCRUM acceptance and adherence.
* Alignment on SCRUM progress measurement techniques across the organization.
However these challenges can also be overcome by having SCRUM expertiz on team.

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