Scrum in Process Improvement Projects

By: Sameh Zeid (sameh.zeid@gmail.com)

BACKGROUND

Process Improvement (PI) projects are known to lack momentum to deliver quick results
that derives value to the business. Though the PI team may have the required skills and
motivation, however, the lack of results fades the importance of PI.

PI is vital apart from the industry. Organizations embark into PI initiatives hoping to solve
business problems, improve productivity, reduce defects, and to cope with changes.

PI projects fail because of the inherent change in focus and redefinition of the problem.
Having Scrum as evolutionary framework for managing PI projects can help in addressing
the turbulent conditions accompanying them.

It’s worth mentioning that implementing certain practices (e.g. Agile) should not be
considered a process improvement. It’s more a transformation initiative. PI is characterized
that the solution is unknown.

CHARACTERISTICS OF PI

Process Improvement or PI is like sailing in unchartered

waters. Those who have the courage can discover new
destinations and increase their knowledge. If you are complacent,
others will discover better ways and you may not be able to
compete.

PI effort fraction- The output from the PI effort can become

the norm of the whole organization in the near future. Both
practitioners and PI professionals co-work on the PI effort to
achieve business objective. A typical business objective can
possible be to reduce defects found by the customer by 50%.

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 The story starts when we are unhappy with the current situation
and we like to move to a new destination. For example, we want to reduce
defects in our products; however, we don’t know how our processes
should be. Not knowing the destination adds other sphere of complexity
to PI projects.

Discover Journey- We spend most of the project time in

learning to uncover the real problems. We collect data to provide
objective understanding of the situation. We analyze potential
factors that could contribute to the problem. We are uncertain
about the real measures of success; we keep refining these
measures as we progress in the project. Findings, can initiate the
need for more discoveries.

Harvesting the outcome- We spend lot of effort exploring

the possible solutions to address the identified causes. Once we
select the solution we begin cycle for implementation or product
development. We are unsure whether we solved the problem and
realized the ROI till we measure the performance after the solution
is implemented.

Schedule commitment- The fact that PI is discovery focused

raises greater need to find innovative ways to demonstrate progress
on short time intervals. Management can discontinue the project if
we kept doing discovery without showing quick results to cope with
the urgency of the problem. Having meaningful findings and
intermediate results can be key requirement for visibility and
securing the continuation of the project.

Budgeting- How to reply to management if they ask you to

reduce the defects found by the customer by 50% in three months?
The key is to identify root causes at the earliest to have
understanding of possible solutions to address them. If there is an

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imposed time limit, then, this might limit the options and can lead us to reach a solution that is
not aligned well with the real issue.

A TURBULENT PI PROJECT

Low speed- A factory is not able to refurbish the high volume

of returned boxes they receive monthly. The understanding was
they need find way to increase the refurbishment speed. They
were looking for a solution to help increase the productivity.

The factory can only refurbish 60,000 out of the 200,000 boxes
they receive monthly.

Focus shift- The discovery phase has proved that 140,000 of

the boxes should not be received in the first place. This has re-
focused the project to other groups. Also, it has redefined the
problem. If only the eligible boxes are sent to the factory, then
there would be no problem in terms of their productivity.

Cost of Poor Quality- It was estimated that the annual cost

of refurbishing the wrongly received boxes is $10,000,000.
Management focus was changed to how to stop the drain of money,
instead of increasing the productivity of the factory.

More groups- The problem became inter-organizational wide

and required hand-offs with other departments. The attention
turned to solve a problem at large that is far beyond of being an
issue with the refurbishment center.

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 Business value- No value would have been gained from solving
the problem as it was originally defined. The real value came from
discovery and exposing unexpected facts.

SCRUM AS FRAMEWORK FOR PI PROJECTS

The turbulent nature of PI, continuous change in focus, not knowing

the product and constant change makes Scrum a suitable project
management framework. PI projects similar to the above example
can be easily terminated as almost the focus has been directed
toward different priority. Setting goals at short sprint (two weeks) is
key advantage to the project.

The built-in structure for inspect and adapt allows the project to change focus towards
different problems. The high interaction inherent in Scrum helps to maintain momentum
and increase the sense of urgency towards solving cross-organizational problems.

Improvement Backlog

Estimat
e
Improve Business Priorit (story- Risk Sprin
ment Value Deliverables Stakeholders y point) t

Critical

create Value
Stream
Sales,
(end-to-end)
Customer
Analyze Op, Factory,
Reduce $5M
returns annual hand-offs of Vendors,
Value Transportati
by 50% savings
Stream on,
Provision,
Billing 100 VH

Time study 60 VH
for sample
returns 60 H

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 Identify M
causes of
return 60

Statistical L
analysis of
findings Sameh 13

Improvement Backlog (IBL) can be vital for driving the project work. The IBL consists of:

 Improvement stories: These should have money value attached to each as expected
ROI.
 Discovery stories: These are the deliverables which if produced and studied can
help in deriving intelligent and unexpected facts about the causes of the problem.

We cannot have improvement stories without having first discovery stories.

Because of change of focus in PI projects, the stakeholders are

highly dynamic. The sprint demo serves to synchronize among
stakeholders and create a sense of ownership on the problem. As
project focus is changed, the attitude of stakeholders will change
too. They can become supporters or roadblocks.

Product Owner (PO) She is the person that mostly impacted

by the existing situation. She is ready to defend the cause of the
project and finance it. The Scrum Team should translate the pains
of the PO into stories in the IBL.

Scrum Team (ST) in PI projects is formed of Practitioners,

Process Analysts, Database Analysts, Statisticians and other
Business Owners. The team uses the findings to derive what
should be added to the IBL. The team heavily relies on the PO to
help providing details of the business processes and rules. The
team should be highly interacting and on daily basis. The activities

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of the team require regular meetings with various business owners. The team should
implement mechanism for internally reviewing the work product.

Scrum Master (SM) This role is currently debatable in the

Scrum community. It is even more questionable in PI projects. She
helps the project by ensuring having unbiased re-focusing and re-
definition of the problem. The project management background of
the Scrum Team tends to conflict with this role.

Why am I here? According to Ken Blanchard, “The key to

successful leadership today is influence and not authority”. This
saying applies squarely to the role of Scrum Master. The Scrum
Master facilitates 1) the ability to cope with change, and 2) the
ability to deliver in regular cadence. These two practices are
missed in traditional PI projects.

Traditional PI projects lack the momentum to survive as the

focus is changed. Agile PI projects are run by facilitators instead
of the highly analytical people of the tradition PI world. This
helps the project to evolve to produce better value to the
business.

TABLE OF ACRONYMS
PI Process Improvement

IBL Improvement Backlog

PO Product Owner

PM Project Manager

SM Scrum Master

REFERENCES AND LINKS

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 1. Mark A. Nash, Sheila R. Poling and Sophronia Award: “Using Lean for Faster Six
Sigma Results”.
2. Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle: “Agile Software Development with Scrum”.
3. Larry L. Constantine: “Beyond Chaos- The Expert Edge in Managing Software
Development”.
4. Jim Highsmith: “Agile Project Management”
5. Mary Walton: “The DEMINGS Management Method”.
6. Mike Cohn: “Agile Estimating and Planning”.

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