Understanding Scope in Agile vs Traditional Project Management: Sprint Planning & Delivery
Introduction
The concept of "Scope" can be applied differently to both agile methodologies and traditional project management and how these two may be different. If you are an upcoming project manager, you must understand the different implications scope can have when planning and executing sprints. Being able to understand how planning for sprints and delivering finished products may differ in agile, especially when scope is being dictated by other factors in the case of agile.
What is scope?
Scope in the context of project management refers to the extent a task or job may encompass, it essentially defines what is covered or not by the project you and your team are working on. Key aspects that are also defined when setting the scope of your project are things like : project objectives, defines specific objectives of the project and outlines desired outcomes, deliverables, defines the expected outcome specifically tangible or intangible items that may result from this project, constraints, takes into account limitations of the project, constraints can also define budget resources or time expectations. This is important to know since leaving information out of your scope can negatively affect the end result of your project; scope plays a crucial role in the planning and execution of your project since it defines your blueprint for your project and ensures all needs are met. In regular project management, a customer can come to you during the planning stage of the project management and define their needs and expectations, these expectations often don't change constantly so the scope my be defined early on and remain the same until the project is finished. But when working in agile how can this be different? especially when user stories are defined on a consistent basis, sprints are being completed often.
Scope in Agile
When planning a project, focusing on scope in agile must be from the end user, you must think on the value you will provide to the user and the business. In agile sprint planning is a crucial aspect, team members must define user stories and select them for upcoming sprints. When taking these user stories here is where scope can be defined in agile, essentially considering all aspects of what these end users are looking for and how all team members can meet these expectations. In agile the end user is everything, the user will define the scope and what based off their needs the scope will be set, users define the requirements and expectations of these projects. Things teams must consider is when expectations are changed, the scope is also changed and teams must be able to adapt these changes to the scope and plan for a different end product unlike regular project management where the end goal isnt changed as much.
Sprint planning
When planning for sprints, team members must consider the following: agile teams often set a priority level to each one of their user stories, this way they can decide which feature to work on next, often this priority level is defined by the importance of the customer or the importance of the feature; what do we mean by this? the customer could be someone influential or simply someone who has been using the platform for a while, and the importance of a feature can be defined on whether many users have asked for similar features, or if its something that should be completed before starting on other features. Another thing teams must consider is that these features and user stories are continuously refined and reprioritized, this allows teams to change priority levels and focus on different projects based off these priorities.
Delivery
When considering delivery in agile, teams must be quick to adapt to certain changes or expectations and be able to respond to these changes quicker than regular project management, going back to user stories, when the user story is changed, the scope is also different, and thus the end product is now different as well, so if teams are now prepared to respond to these changes delivery can be delayed further than necessary.
When focusing on delivering in agile, we must always do so focusing on the risk some of these user stories could bring to our project, when delivering a project, Agile's iterative approach allows for teams to identify potential risk of not meeting user expectations and thus allowing us to adjust and meet these expectations on a future sprint.
Conclusion
In conclusion, when working on agile, scope may be defined differently than in regular project management, working in agile it is all about the end user and defining scopes must be all about the users expectations and needs. Delivering and sprint planning must consider the user in every step, and teams must prepare always for changes within this scope and be able to change their goals as needed by these customers. Agile works great for being flexible, higher customer satisfaction and can reduce risk, by allowing teams to change expectations as needed and being able to do this closely with the customer, but to accomplish this, teams must always be prepared to adapt and deliver quality projects.
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