Doing the Right thing vs Doing it Right

Photo by: Teuobk

In a recent thought provoking blog post by Allan Kelly titled "Requirements Come Second", Allan makes the case for resolving the development process side of the business first before addressing alignment issues with the business.

It's probably one of the most interesting blogs for a while and there have been lots of good comments made. I suggest you read the full article. I guess I can't argue with the data. However I don't think it's that hard to work on both sides simultaneously. And I truly believe that the Scrum process makes it easy to address both requirements and development process at the same time assuming you are following the prescribed Scrum practices. Let me explain....

Scrum requires that you have a single Backlog of requirements and that you have a single owner of the Backlog - the Product Owner. The Product Owner is responsible for sequencing the Backlog and therefore he can't be doing this in isolation of the business. Scrum also prescribes that teams identify Sprint goals at the start of every iteration. These goals need to be aligned with the business overarching vision and strategy.

Bottom line is that adopting Scrum is going to help your company get aligned with the business and of course will help you with the development process at the same time. Additionally, I still believe that the biggest risk of all is delivering the wrong Product so I think it's prudent to deal with this side of the business as well. Why not?

I personally don't buy doing one without the other. And Scrum really helps you to address both at the same time.

Written by Jack Milunksy - COO at Brightspark, certified ScrumMaster and Co-founder of Agilebuddy (Agile project management software that lets you easily Create, Estimate, Plan and Track your software development projects). For great Agile tips follow Jack at: www.twitter.com/agilebuddy. To get more info on Agilebuddy please visit: www.agilebuddy.com