Topic Title: Having Business representative/user as part of Scrum Team
Initiator: Ruchir Shah
Participants: Caurie Waddell, Dennis Griffith, David Corbin, Tracey Long
Discussion Highlights:
- Dealing with change in expectations that business teams have as we transition from Waterfall to Agile
- Customer wants more self service
- Developing better bonding between IT and business teams is key for realizing maximum benefits from agile
- At times, instead of trying convince business through internal channels, bring in external consultants who can really push the envelope and highlight what is wrong and why we should transition
Ideas for Action/Next Steps:
- Instead of looking to make business part of scrum team, focus should be on more engagement of business team with Scrum team
How:
- Enforce: Stop working on next set of items if business doesn’t engage and provide feedback [hard way]
- Sell: Help business look at their extra engagement as INVESTMENT for better BENEFITS (in terms of cost, better understanding of systems, reduced turn around time etc)
- Value: Encourage business by highlighting success of other teams, that are more engaged, in delivering more value
- Push: Bring in push from top of the organizational structure to adopt agile and engage