Re-Thinking Scope Management

One of the biggest challenges working with agile development is the paradigm shift of how we view and handle scope management.

There are two completely different approaches towards handling a project’s scope. On one side you have the plan-driven approaches which work hard to prevent any changes in the scope. While, on the other side, having the value-driven approaches which are expecting and embracing scope change. Hence, as a result, the agile way is to fix resources and schedule, and then simply work to implement the highest value features defined by the customer. This way, the scope remains flexible. However, at the same time the traditional way is trying to define the features (scope) in detail, driving the cost and schedule estimates.

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Queuing Theory

It is important to examine and understand why the seven wastes are so prevalent. It’s mostly because no company truly can understand how to eliminate these wastes until it understands their true root cause. Considering the queuing theory will provide some important insights about the root cause of waste in product development. However, as a reference, traditional product development practices that are particularly problematic include that..

.. product development working in large batches created by the stage-gate or milestone based product development processes.

.. product development working with differing levels of capacity at any point in time creating capacity mismatches and resulting in a general ignorance of the capacity and is followed by constant system overburdening.

.. unpredictable product development workloads expanding to take up all the time of all engineers assigned to projects.

.. highly cyclic product development workloads characterized by lulls in workload followed by tremendous system congestion, and thereby expanding lead times beyond planned deadlines.

.. low levels of task execution and scheduling discipline, leading to high levels of both task and interarrival variability.

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Horizon of predictability

“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.“
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)

Imagine a pilot flying a a-330 from Copenhagen to Japan. The plan is to land at the Narita International airport. Once airborne though, unexpected winds, other aircraft traffic, mid-ocean storms, even solar flare activity affect and alter the airplane’s course. Unmanaged, the pilot would just as likely land the plane in Seoul rather than in Tokyo. The flight plan sets an initial course and a final destination, but the process of planning ensures that the pilot takes the appropriate corrective action to get the airplane where it needs to go.

Now, just imagine what the plan is for your own project. It is telling you where you are planning of going with your project, and it is not much different from the illustration above; it doesn’t consider any of the unexpected things that will pop up and affect you and your plan. While working on the project new and/or changed requirements will occur, your senior developer lead will leave the company, the sales and marketing department promised the customers functionality that simply isn’t in the scope, and now even the market has changed its mind and is requiring your product to come in orange (instead green). Your project plan sets the initial course and final result, but it is the process of planning that ensures your project to take appropriate corrective action to get the product that the customer really wants. The bottom line here is that the plan itself is worthless, while the activity of planning is everything! Continue reading →