ENGN3221 Engineering Management

Introduction

In the early 1990’s, the PC computing started proliferating within the enterprise where software development experiences a crisis. During this particular time, it was widely referred as the application development crisis. In some of the industries, the lag was quite greater than three years. John Kern who was one of the engineers in aerospace, get frustrated with the long lag as well as lead time and therefore he decided to develop software much more simply (Rasnacis & Berzisa, 2017).  In the year 2000, 17 software developers including John Kern discusses way that are helpful in speeding up the entire development time for brining the software quite fester within the market. The recognized two important opportunities in order to achieve the goal. The first opportunity is to reduce the delay of benefits for resolving product market fit and secondly, it is important to get proper feedback from users for confirming the usefulness of software (Azanha et al., 2017). After a year after the Oregon meeting, the history of the agile methodology generally came into focus. During these particular meeting, the project team focuses on expanding the progress for landing proper and accurate solution for the major development-based problems of the time.

Agile project management

Agile project management is considered as an iterative approach to project management that mainly focuses on breaking down the projects into more manageable tasks which are generally accomplished in short iterations throughout the lifecycle of the project. Team that generally adopt agile methodology can be able to complete work faster and can generally adapt to various kinds of changes for optimizing the workflow of the project (Buganova & Simičkova, 2019).  Additionally, agile helps in allowing the team to properly equipped with the change direction as well as focus.  Transparency is considered as one of the central themes of agile as in agile, people can generally share the work progresses by effectively integrating information-based radiators within the Kanban boards. Additionally, agile methodologies generally help the team in managing the work much more efficiently for delivering highest quality of the project within the budget constraints that are mentioned (Ciric et al., 2018). Moreover, the agile methodology helps in allowing the clients to effectively determine the priorities of the features so that the team can be able to understand which of the features are important for the business so that they can be able to deliver the features of the business quite effectively.

Scrum

 Scrum is one of the agile development-based methodology that is mainly utilized for successful development of the software based iterative as well as incremental processes. Scrum is identified to be quite adaptable, flexible, fast as well as effective agile framework that is mainly designed for delivering value the customers throughout the development of the project (Khalid et al., 2020). The main objective of the scrum is to effectively satisfy the various needs of the customer through an environment of transparency in context to communication, continuous progress as well as collective responsibility. In scrum, the entire project team focuses on development of proper quality-based software and the owner generally focuses on defining the characteristics of the product (Morandini et al., 2021). Additionally, the person who generally leads the entire team helps in guiding them to effectively comply with the various rules as well as processes of the methodology. Moreover, the scrum master generally assists in managing the reduction associated with impediments of the project and generally work with the various owners for maximizing the ROI.

Scrum principles

Scrum perquisites

 Scrum principles are some of the guidelines that are mainly applied in the scrum framework. They are identified as non-negotiable and must be effectively used for instilling confidence within the scrum framework. The six principles of scrum are mainly elaborated below.

• Empirical process control: This particular principle generally emphasizes on the core principles of scrum that is mainly based on three types of ideas including inspection, adaptation as well as transparency (Ma’arif et al., 2018).
• Self-organization: This particular principle mainly focuses on enhancing the level of independence of the entire team and further helps in assessing the performance.
• Collaboration: This particular principle generally focuses on three different types of dimensions that are mainly associated with collaborative work including articulation, awareness as well as appropriation.
• Value based prioritization: This principle helps in highlighting the focus that are is associated with scrum for delivering maximum value to the business from early within the project (De Vasconcelos et al., 2018).
• Time-boxing: It generally implies allocation as well as scheduling of different amount of time for certain activities. This particular principle helps in describing the time that is found to be considered as one of the limiting constraints within scrum for managing both planning and execution.
• Iterative development: This particular principle helps in defining the iterative development for emphasizing proper changes as well as for building products for satisfying the needs of the customers.
  
  

Explanation of the framework, its steps and process

From the above scrum framework process, it is found that the heart of the scrum is a sprint which is either a time box of two weeks or one months which is effectively releasable. It is found that a new print generally starts immediately faster the previous sprint completed and the sprint generally consists of planning, daily scrums, development work, sprint review as well as sprint retrospective (Albarqi & Qureshi, 2018). It is identified that during sprint planning, the entire work will be effectively performed in the sprint collaboratively by the scrum team. In addition to this, the daily scrum meeting is one of the 15-minute time boxed event for the scrum team that helps in synchronizing the activities for creating proper plan. In addition to this, the daily scrim meeting is one of the 15-minute time box related event for the scrum team for effectively synchronizing the activities as well as creating proper plan for that particular day (Ali et al., 2018). Moreover, the sprint review is mainly held ay the last step of the sprint for inspecting the increment for making changes within the product backlog id required. Furthermore, the sprint retrospective generally occurs at the end of the sprint review just prior to the next sprint planning. Within the meeting, the scrum team generally inspect itself for creating proper plan in order to make improvements during the subsequent sprint.

Application of scrum

The team

 Scrum framework when applied in the team generally helps the team to work together within the project. Additionally, it is found that scrum generally encourages the entire team learn with the help of self-experiences, self-organize while working on a specific problem and generally reflects on the wins for making continuous improvement. During the application of scrum, the team are considered as the champions for undertaking sustainable development-based practices (Bica & da Silva,2020).  Team members generally have different skill sets and generally cross-train each other so no person generally becomes bottleneck during the delivery of the work.

Team leader

 Scrum team leader are considered as the champions for scrum as well as within the team. They generally help in coaching team, product owners as well as business on the scrum-based process. An effective team leader generally understands the work that is mainly done by the entire team and further helps in team optimizing for transparency as well as delivering the flow. As one of the significant facilitators, the project team generally schedule the required resources for undertaking sprint planning, stand up, sprint review as well as sprint retrospective (Jurado-Navas & Munoz-Luna, 2017).

Team prerequisites

It is found that before applying scrum within the project, the number of prerequisites that the team needs to undertake are mainly elaborated below.

• In the first step, it is quite crucial to define different types of scrum-based elements. Having proper understanding about who generally meets the different types of necessary conditions are mainly needed for successful implementation of scrum.
• In the second step, it is necessary to prioritize the list of objectives as well as backlog for the project. It is found that backlog is generally considered as one of the roadmaps for undertaking the product (Alexandros et al., 2017).
• Thirdly, it is necessary to prepare proper planning for the sprint where estimations can be easily made and commitment related to the project can be effectively established for undertaking the performance of the tasks as well as stories.
• It is also crucial to make the work as well as daily meetings quite visible for this particular purpose, it is advisable to utilize different types off tools including TFS, Trello as well as burndown diagram (Vogelzang, Admiraal & van Driel, 2020).
  
  

The application

 Scrum is one of the leading agile methodology that is mainly utilized by Fortune 500 companies all around the world. This particular methodology is quite applicable for the purpose of software development however any companies that generally helps in providing the ability of reacting quickly and to be much more agile. Moreover, scrum can be utilized by anyone who generally requires to produce the end product including webpage, a software program as well as even in construction-based projects (Garzaniti et al., 2019).

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages

The advantages of using scrum methodology within the project are mainly are mainly elaborated below:

• Flexibility and adaptivity: Scrum is best suited within a very much uncertain environment. Though it is difficult to define the requirements of as well as design of the project prior to its starting still it is not impossible. Both flexibility as well as adaptivity are identified essential for defining as well as elaborating the requirements as well as design of the solution of the project (Naik & Jenkins, 2019).
• Creativity and innovation: Within a very much competitive environment, scrum helps in emphasizing creating as well as innovation for maximizing the business-related value within the solution. It is found that over-emphasis on planning as well as control generally stifle both innovation as well as creativity.
• Time to market: Scrum approach generally helps in faster time to market because of the shorter start-up times. Proper incremental development-based effort will generally help in allowing much more early delivery without completing the entire solution 100% (Mousaei & Javdani, 2018).
• Lower costs: Scrum approach helps in lowering the cost of the project in a number of ways by significantly minimizing the overhead that results from reduction of unnecessary documentation as well as control related requirements. Additionally, it also helps in increasing productivity.
  
  

Disadvantages of using scrum

  The disadvantages that the project team needs to experience due to the use of scrum are mainly elaborated below.

• Training and skills required: Scrum approach generally needs proper amount of training as well as skills for implementation. There are a number of project team that do not effectively understand the requirement of training as well as skills however in order to successfully use scrum, training is crucial (Madeja & Biňas, 2018).
• Organizational transformation: A scrum approach generally need some level of organizational transformation in order to make the project successful. It generally needs the business users to effectively work with the development-based team within a sprit of trust as well as partnership.
• Scalability:It is quite difficult to effectively scale a scrum approach within large as well as complex projects. There are a number of models for doing so and some off the models includes scrum-of scrums, LeSS as well as SAFe however none of the methods are easy for implementation (Ahmad et al., 2020).
  
  

Challenges

Some of the challenges that are experienced by project team while applying scrum within the project are mainly elaborated below.

• Resistance to change: Resistance to change is one of the major challenges that are experienced while adopting scrum within the project. Scrum generally proves to be very challenging for the purpose of deployment (Alexandros et al., 2017).
• Distributed team:A common perception exists that co-located scrum team would be better for ensuring good communication and for delivering better output than the distributed team. Technically, it is found that scrum generally helps in allowing the project team to be in different place. Communication is considered as one of the core challenges that are experienced by the distributed team and due to improper communication, the quality of the project gets affected negatively.
• Wasteful daily stand-up meetings:Scrum generally considers meeting of 15 minutes on a daily basis however team meeting on a daily basis is not always required and it generally wastes precious time of the team members (Bica & da Silva, 2020). Additionally, the duration of the meeting was not always 15 minutes and it takes longer period of time of the workers.
  
  

Cases where companies introduced to scrum

Case 1

The Dutch railways are identified as one of the most heavily used railways within the world by providing transport of around 1.2 million passengers on daily basis. Dutch railways generally developed a new information system for providing travellers with accurate information regarding travel. During the progress of the project an agile approach using Scrum was used that focuses on close cooperation with the users, open communication as well as on small iterations of the project work. It is found that due to the use of scrum, the project was delivered successful (Distributed Scrum Project for Dutch Railways 2021). Thus, it is found that scrum is well- suited for effective execution with a number of distributed teams.

Case 2

Andrew Scotland is identified as the head of development within the BBC’s New Media Division. Within one of the conferences, Andrew reveals about the uncertainty that BBC goes through and in order to handle such situation, the project team decided to use Scrum in order to effectively deliver the software amidst of all types of changes as well as uncertainty (Scrum Boosts Effectiveness at the BBC 2021). After three years, the difference that is identified is significant and it is analyzed that the journey becomes worthwhile due to the utilization of scrum as it helps in boosting the effectiveness at the BBC.

Case 3

Within the microprocessor industry, it is found that the product development engineering group generally existed for providing the test collateral for support cost effective device screening as well as classification. Squeezed between the actual design teams as well as factory-based manufacturing team, PDE generally puts high pressure without creating control of team level deadline, requirements as well as scope. For effectively organizing the integration, scrum is mainly used (Intel case, 2021). A Scrum Odyssey by Pat Elwer, Intel Corporation was utilized for undertaking the project and it is found that scrum generally served quite well within the product development-based engineering. The commitment as well as high cadre of Scrum believers generally kept us coming back for making it much better.

Discussion

Scrum vs hybrid stage gate

 According to Alexandros et al. (2017), Scrum is one of the frameworks within which people can generally addresses a number of complex adaptive problems while productively as well as creatively delivering different types of products for the highest possible value.  It is stated by Albarqi and Qureshi (2018) that hybrid stage gate is one of the variations of stage gate that generally combines with the structure of the classic stage gate with the help of short cycle iterations as well as self-organized teams. The main visible difference between both the methodology is that Hybrid stage gate is considered as one of the parts of very much larger as well as formalized procedures whereas scrum methodology helps in advocating freeform organization.

Analysis from literature

From the literature, it is exposed that scrum is one of the frameworks that generally help the entire team to work together and further encourages them to effectively learn with the help of their experiences, self-organization while working on a particular program and generally reflect on the win as well as loss for making continuous improvement. Additionally, it is found that from the literature that during the adoption of scrum, a number of challenges are experienced by the project team because of resistance, distributed team, daily stand-up meeting as well as due to improper communication among the team members.

Researchers’ contribution

 The researchers reflects that the challenges that are experienced during the adoption of scrum can be resolved effectively, if the scrum team takes proper initiative. Though the scrum team is distributed, the project managers need to take regular meeting through different communication tools including Google Meet, Microsoft teams as well as slack for discussing the project related challenges and for taking correct initiative for the project (Vogelzang, Admiraal & Van Driel, 2020).  Additionally, the team meeting must be done on weekly basis so that too much time does not get waste on meetings. Furthermore, the resistance towards change must also be resolved by taking necessary steps to mitigate it.

Findings retrieved from literature and cases

The findings that are mainly retrieved from the literature as well as cases suggests that scrum are quite helpful for the team for completing the deliverables of the project quite quickly as well as efficiently. Additionally, scrum generally encourages the active product owner as well as stakeholder involvement throughout the product development. Moreover, transparency is identified to be quite higher which in turn helps in ensuring higher expectations that are needed to be managed quite effectively.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the paper that Scrum is quite beneficial for undertaking complex and large projects. The paper showcases three case scenarios where scrum methodology is used and the application off scrum within all the methodologies generally helps in brining positive results. Additionally, the paper showcases the advantages, disadvantages, challenges as well as application of scrum within the project. Furthermore, scrum principles are also reflected which showcases the way in which scrum is mainly used in the projects.

Bibliography 

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Albarqi, A. A., & Qureshi, R. (2018). The proposed L-Scrumban methodology to improve the efficiency of agile software development. International Journal of Information Engineering and Electronic Business, 12(3), 23.

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