Liberating your Teams from Rigid Scope and Date Agreements

This is a session selected for the Global Scrum Gathering in Portland USA inspired by The Contract Game and discussion of ways to eliminated it - many related to Scrum and LeSS.

Liberating your Teams from Rigid Scope and Date Agreements
Q: Do you start initiatives in a complex domain by attempting to answer “what are we going to deliver and when”?

Q: Do internal stakeholders negotiate a scope and date agreement with development and then expected teams to keep “on track” to deliver the agreed deliverables by the agreed date?

Q: Do developers cut corners in order to achieve this?

In this session we will explore how the scope and date-based “Contract Game” is misaligned with Agile as well as Scrum. Also how game theory can help us raise awareness how this competitive game results in many negative outcomes when reality does not go to plan (inevitable in a complex domain). This damage is often unrecognised because it is experience by a different group of people, often much later.

We will also outline how to lead your organisation to the co-operative game aligned with Agile methods. This includes at least 7 specific techniques.

You can expect to walk away with new language and a practical Scrum-based approach for eliminating the Contract Game so that empiricism and agility can thrive.

--- Learning Outcomes ---

• Awareness of the likely consequences of rigid scope and date agreements in a complex environment.
• Ability to explain the Contract Game as conceived by Craig Larman and the co-operative game as conceived by Alistair Cockburn.
• Ability to explain how the Contract Game is misaligned with Agile and Scrum.
• Awareness of several approaches to moving beyond the Contract Game.
• Identification of at least one practical step that can be taken to move beyond the Contract Game.

--- Who ---
Target Audience:
• Managers
• Scrum Masters
• Agile Coaches
• Other change leaders

--- Prerequisites for participants ---

• Experience with scope and date based projects or releases
• Awareness of The Agile Manifesto for Software Development
• Basic understanding of the Scrum framework
• Awareness of the consequences of sustained technical debt

--- When ---
5:20pm (AEDT) Join the call for informal networking
5:30pm Welcome and speaker introduction
5:35pm Talk
6:25pm Q&A
6:40pm Close