One of the core aspects that differentiate agile project management from traditional waterfall methods is the flexible approach to scope and requirements. While scope rigidity is valued in waterfall, agile embraces flexibility and encourages adapting scope as needed throughout the project lifetime. This blog discusses the agile perspective on scoping work and how a flexible, adaptive mindset helps deliver value to customers.
What is Scope in Agile?
In agile, scope refers to the features, functions, and capabilities that need to be delivered as part of the project or product. However, it isn't defined upfront in great detail like in waterfall. Rather than a rigid scope baseline, agile focuses on:
High-level scope: Based on business needs and product vision, the high-level scope defines the general purpose and capabilities of the product.
Iteration scope: Broken into iterations (sprints), detailed scope is defined for each iteration based on priority. Only a small subset of overall scope is addressed per iteration.
Evolving scope: Scope can change over time as priorities shift or market needs evolve. Changes are handled transparently through iterative planning.
This flexible, evolving view of scope contrasts traditional "iron-triangle" fixation on scope baseline in waterfall.
Why Scope Flexibility is Important in Agile
There are several key reasons why adapting scope is crucial in agile compared to rigid pre-defined scope:
Changing priorities: Business priorities, customer needs, market conditions can change rapidly. A flexible scope allows addressing emerging high-value work.
Incomplete information: Upfront, information about requirements is limited. Scope has to adapt based on customer feedback, insights from early product versions.
Responding to uncertainty: Several project aspects are uncertain upfront like technical risks, integration challenges. Flexibility helps tackle uncertainties.
Continued value delivery: Rather than big upfront design, iterative scope enables continuous value delivery even if the overall scope evolves over time.
Feedback-driven development: Scope is constantly refined based on objective, measurable evidence from iterations like working software and customer validation.
These agile benefits simply cannot be achieved with an inflexible, pre-set scope baseline like in waterfall.
Managing Scope Flexibility
While scope flexibility is crucial, unconstrained changes can impact predictability and productivity. So agile balances flexibility with control through transparent processes:
Scope Management Processes
Product backlog: Central, prioritized list of all features within high-level scope. Constantly refined.
Sprint backlog: Features extracted from product backlog for the current sprint. Fixed for the iteration.
Scope planning meetings: Timeboxed sessions to review scope, priorities, capacity for upcoming iterations.
Daily standups: Track ongoing work, identify blockers and scope risks early within a sprint.
Change Management
Impact analysis: Evaluate technical debt, timeline effects before accepting new work.
Stakeholder alignment: Get consensus from business, customers on scope priority changes.
Backlog hygiene: Regularly refine, decompose, estimate backlog items to accept changes fluidly.
Transparency helps manage scope flexibility while ensuring scope changes are reasoned, controlled and for maximizing value.
Scope Adaptation in Practice
Let's understand scope adaptation in practice through a hypothetical agile project:
The project aims to develop an expense management app. Initially, three core features - expense entry, reports, budgets are prioritized.
In Iteration 1, entry screens are developed. Feedback identifies a need for receipt uploads. This high-value work is added after stakeholder discussion.
Iteration 2 builds basic reports and starts budgets. However, regulations introduce new compliance needs. Scope is adjusted by removing less critical entry fields.
By Iteration 3, priorities shift towards compliance. Budgeting work is paused and resources reallocated to compliance features.
Iteration 4 resumes budgets while addressing remaining compliance work. New workflows identified during testing are also added.
This example shows how agile scope continuously evolves based on learning, adapting to maximize customer benefit until the final product delivery.
Conclusion
In conclusion, flexible scope management is key to achieving the promised benefits of agile like rapid value delivery, response to change and continuous improvement. By embracing an evolving view of scope handled through transparent processes, agile projects stay aligned with shifting priorities while ensuring work progresses predictably towards the desired outcome. While challenging traditional notions,scope flexibility is what enables agile to truly deliver on its adaptive, insight-driven approach.
