"Shorting development cycles through sprint planning was a key learning in the 2-day Scrum course; a learning that will make it easier for me to hit my project goals."
- Kelly Wald, LaserFiche

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Extreme Business Value

ExtremeValue is a business driven methodology for wringing every possible cent of value from your investments in product and systems projects. ExtremeValue differs from usual practices in that it causes functionality and value to be produced incrementally so value can be realized early and built upon, and business strategy prioritizes the sequence of functionality delivery so that the return on investment is maximized.

ExtremeValue also reduces risk. Investment is never greater than thirty days of effort! Every thirty days, the business owner can change any of the project parameters without penalty, including increasing investment to quicken delivery of value, reducing investment until unknowns are mitigated, or reinvesting in other initiatives.

Of all software projects initiated in the United States, 94% are eventually restarted. In 1994, a whopping 84% of these projects fail to deliver the value that was desired by their customers, either because they never deliver any software or by the time they deliver the software it is no longer relevant to the business problem; by 2000 this had dropped to only 72% failing to deliver desired value, still no cause for celebration. Successful projects were analyzed to determine the reason for their success. The most important success criteria were user involvement (35.1%) and requirements management (24.1%). Proper planning, a consequence of both, contributed 9.6% to the success of the projects.

Scrum supports business value driven software development. Driven by business priorities, functionality is delivered iteratively and incrementally by self-organizing teams, with the first increment of useful functionality often delivered within thirty days of the start of the project. Rather than waiting until requirements are finalized or architectures are detailed, Scrum lets requirements, architectures and designs emerge throughout the project.

Scrum provides you, the manager, direct visibility into a the ongoing development of a product so that you can steer the process in real time, making tradeoff's between cost, time, quality, and functionality to deliver the most important customer functionality as soon as possible. Scrum allows you to take the very complex process of product development and control it directly.

In a normal development project, changes either are deferred until after the initial system is delivered or extensive change management processes are used to adjust cost, date, or functionality whenever a change is requested. The results are either systems that often don't provide the business value because they are out of date, or systems that are never delivered because they are embroiled in the change management process.

Scrum avoids this dilemma by embracing the expected changes through value driven project management. To the customer, business value is a function of his or her choice of cost, quality, time, and functionality:

business value = f(cost, time, functionality, quality)

Prior to each iteration, the customer identifies his or her highest priority requirements that will create a business value. The team identifies how many of these requirements can be turned into a product increment that delivers that value during the next iteration. The team then proceeds for one iteration, doing their best to create this business value. The only deliverable required from the team is live, demonstrable business functionality working on a computer. At the end of the iteration, the customer reviews the working system functionality with the team.

Value driven projects leave the determination of the four variables in the customers' hands throughout the project. The customer is free to change them at the end of every iteration. The customer controls the project, guiding the work to deliver what constitutes business value. The visual review of what the team produces every iteration greatly helps the customer make this determination. The customer collaborates with the development team before every iteration to focus on this value.

Two types of information guide the manager using Scrum : frequent, first-hand observations, and work burn-down charts. The manager must actively, intelligently use these to optimize the productivity of the project. There is no place for hands-off management with Scrum.

The basis of Scrum -the foundation upon which Scrum rests - is industrial process theory. This theory states that processes that are undefined (that is, unpredictable, complex, dynamic) require different management and control structures than those that are fully predictable (say, those with which a CMM process would work). This is a pretty blunt assertion! However, anyone who has tried to predict the direction of a development project, consisting of people and their vagaries, technology and its flaws, the marketplace and its volatility, and requirements and their inherent fluctuations, is pretty hungry for something that works.

And Scrum works. Management in numerous companies have brought uncontrolled, disastrous projects under control and to fruition using Scrum. A bold assertion, but it has worked, theoretically works, and will work for you.