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Question for everyone! What kind of Agile framewor..

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Level 3
Question for everyone! What kind of Agile framework are you currently using? If you don't see your situation, please tell us all about it in the comments below.
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Level 2

When we had the mandate to move to more agile ways of working, we focused our learning efforts on Scrum. No one in the business had any real experience of it, so we really did have to start from scratch. Since then we have looked into more of a kanban method, which we have found isn't really lighter version of scrum (which I feel can be misconception) it is a framework to help you visualise your workflow and limit your WIP so you can identify where your bottlenecks are. A great benefit of kanban is that you can introduce it without having to change the way you work or identify new roles, however both take a lot of discipline.

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Level 6

Agreed, we adopted an Agile Scrum Framework for some teams and subsequently introduced them to the Scrum functionality in Workfront. More recently we've been introducing teams to the Kanban functionality but 'embedding' the Frameworks is still a work in progress.

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Employee

@Michelle Smith‚ & @Jane Bradshaw‚ -

Are there different use cases or scenarios where you see that one methodology (whether Kanban or Scrum, etc.) is better suited than another? What are the pros and cons?

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Level 2

Hi Chris

The way I explain it to myself and my teams, is that there are several frameworks with the Agile methodology. Arguably, two of the most popular are the Scrum and Kanban frameworks.

The first question to ask is: 'What are you trying to achieve?'.

If the answer is that you want to manage your workflow, then a Kanban framework will help you by visualising your work, maximise efficiency by identifying bottlenecks and improve continuously. You can apply this framework to any work in your system. Not just projects.

Pros:

Simple to set up, all you need is a board.

No roles are set or defined, so no need to train out new roles

It can be customized to fit the processes and work systems that are already in place

Highly adaptable

Low overheads

Cons:

High levels of discipline to inspect and adapt

Lack of defined roles could lead to no individual or team responsibility

There are no timeframes with each phase. This can make forward planning difficult

If you have a project where there are high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity, the scrum framework can help by adding containers around the work that promote the agile principles of transparency, inspection and adaption. Trying to avoid using software development as an example to show how adaptable the scrum framework it is, you could use the scrum framework to create a KPI Reporting pack for example. The vision is create a KPI pack that shows a true picture of how the department is performing in line with the organisational goals. The team know and understand the goals, but aren't clear on what the requirements are or how they will execute it. So they start by creating a sprint with the goal of producing a pack on PowerPoint, with a top level KPI for each team (this is the MVP), at the end of the sprint, the team present their MVP to the customer, adds more requirements to their backlog, prioritises and creates a goal for the next iteration to build on what they already have.

Pros:

Quicker time to market

Defines roles within a scrum team, making it easier for inexperienced teams to understand who does what

Time boxed events that can help with forward planning.

Dedicated role to guide the team through the process

Cons:

Scrum depends on cross-functional teams. While you can bring together temporary, cross functional project teams, you lose efficiencies when having to start from scratch with a new team every time.

Higher levels of training before you can begin, which can be expensive without in house programs.

My advice would be to become familiar with both frameworks and create simple experiments with various aspects. Creating an agile hybrid is perfectly acceptable if it works best for your context.

The biggest learning curve for me, using both Scrum and Kanban, and one that I am still challenging my teams on a daily basis is, 'what does complete mean?'

Try to make sure that each task covers the end to end process from start to finish. One task for one piece of work, end to end. The most simple reason is that it creates a shared understanding of what complete means. The more complex reason is that the team can identify where the work is at any given time and can swarm to complete the work, making the whole team accountable. The handy by-product is that you only have one task to maintain and update on the board, rather than three, four, five tasks for the same piece of work, for different parts of the process.

Then of course you have the humble waterfall, a bit like the grandad of the bunch, but even the old dog can learn new tricks, by adopting an agile framework, whether it be Scrum or Kanban, during the execution phase and voila, you have your self a hybrid!

These are just based on my experience, would be great to hear about others experience and perceptions of these frameworks

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Employee

Such great examples! Thank you for the time and thought you invested in your response, @Michelle Smith‚.

I find that most environments are hybrid work environments, to one degree or another. That may be due to where they are on the development curve, or perhaps a conscious decision based on work goals.

In a past life heading up Product for a startup, our team went through a fast maturity curve, starting with Kanban (due to the simplicity you mentioned), then transitioning to Scrum. Meanwhile, the rest of the org worked in a waterfall-esque environment by default.

I took special note of your challenge to your teams on "what does complete mean?" This is because, given the nature of our market and products, we have this same conversation internally and with customers quite often.

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Employee

This is an interesting poll happening in the @Agile Conversation‚ group for those using Agile frameworks... I'm wondering if anyone in the @All Discussions‚ group can give feedback to the team.

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Level 3

Hi all, thanks for your responses! I think we're going to close this poll up and then send it out again in 6-months - see if we get a little more input by then. Keep on Agiling! (is that a word?) -Melissa