In adaptive or agile life cycle project management, if an urgent change is initiated or requested within an iteration, how should project manager handle that? Do we need to follow the integrated change control approach or we can just let the self organising team to decide if they can modify or add to the backlog?
How should project manager (or team facilitator) react if a change of feature is requested near the end of the sprint in which the specific feature is already 80% completed? should we ask the project team to stop the work? or should we organise a sprint review and plan the next sprint?
1) What is the magnitude of the change? Are we talking about a new work item being requested to be added to the sprint, a new work item being requested to be added to the product backlog, or a major change to the project as a whole?
2) Changes mid-sprint are rarely a cause to cancel a sprint mid-stream. Even if the work item is 80% complete, if doing the remaining 20% work would be throwaway because of the changes needed to it then the team should assess whether the changes can be accommodated within the sprint to get the work item to done or not without affecting the completion of the other work items they had forecast. If the changes can be accommodated, then they would likely update the acceptance criteria for the work item and complete it along with whatever else was not started or in progress for the sprint. If the changes can't be accommodated without impacting other sprint backlog work items, that becomes a conversation with the product owner to confirm what would be of greatest importance to be completed. In such cases, it is possible that the partially completed work item might not be completed within that sprint and would go back on the product backlog to fight for survival with all other backlog items.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Thanks Kiron! I think your second answer has also indirectly addressed the first question. In that case, can I say integrated change control is rarely used in agile setting given the nature of the iterative planning and the team itself can make a decision on the change request?
...
1 reply by Kiron Bondale
Mar 19, 2020 3:47 PM
Kiron Bondale
...
I wouldn't go to that extent because that means that you wouldn't necessarily fix any constraints on an agile project. The reality is you may still fix one or two legs of the iron triangle and changes which will affect those would need to go through integrated change control.
For example, with the client I most recently did agile coaching for, they had moved to a funding tranche based model. In this model, funding was committed for a set number of months. If a project team required more money, or would take longer to deliver the same business outcomes, that would require a PCR. However, if they could deliver the same outcomes but in a different manner (i.e. different detailed requirements) within the same approved funding envelope, no PCR was required.
So you might find fewer PCRs on a project following an adaptive lifecycle, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't get any...
Thanks Kiron! I think your second answer has also indirectly addressed the first question. In that case, can I say integrated change control is rarely used in agile setting given the nature of the iterative planning and the team itself can make a decision on the change request?
I wouldn't go to that extent because that means that you wouldn't necessarily fix any constraints on an agile project. The reality is you may still fix one or two legs of the iron triangle and changes which will affect those would need to go through integrated change control.
For example, with the client I most recently did agile coaching for, they had moved to a funding tranche based model. In this model, funding was committed for a set number of months. If a project team required more money, or would take longer to deliver the same business outcomes, that would require a PCR. However, if they could deliver the same outcomes but in a different manner (i.e. different detailed requirements) within the same approved funding envelope, no PCR was required.
So you might find fewer PCRs on a project following an adaptive lifecycle, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't get any...
