Friday, October 7, 2016

Sprint 0? Good? Bad?

I recently joined a discussion where people advocated against "Sprint 0".
The arguments delivered are along the lines of "Sprint 0 is only necessary when you consider Scrum a process", "It involves people that don't need to be involved", "It overloads the terms", "Waste", "BUFD", etc.


So, let me create a bit of transparency, regarding what I consider as "Sprint 0":

The following side conditions are in place:

  • It's not necessarily the same time box as the delivery Sprints, but we're working time boxed
  • There is a Backlog for things we need
  • The Deliverables are: 
    • A clear Product Vision
    • A team that can deliver, including a capable PO and SM
    • A technical environment which permits the team to deliver
    • Management supports Scrum
    • Stakeholders are aware of how Scrum changes the game
    • Assured Funding
    • Dedicated availability of developers on the team
  • The team (i.e. the transition team) is delivering using an Inspect+Adapt approach.
There is no doubt that such a phase is necessary, so that the Scrum team has a chance to succeed.

To me, discussing about how to name that phase is just a game of po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

Maybe we can end the religious discussion around Sprint 0 by just calling it the "Potato"?

No comments:

Post a Comment