Project Scope is basically the list of features that defines the product. It is generally documented during project planning in a Scope Statement. Scope Statement lists all the features that define the product. Everything else is considered out of scope.

As per the Wikipedia, here's the definition of Project Scope: "The work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions."

Here's how to manage Project Scope in Agile

The most common challenge that Project Managers face these days, is Managing the Project Scope. After a thorough research, I came up with below points that can help a manager to manage the scope of the project:

1. Creating & Maintaining Scope Statement: The most important and initial part of any project planning is to create a Scope Statement. This is a document that clearly lists what all is included in the project. Everything else is out of scope. It's very important we maintain this scope statement as we move along with the project. Make sure the client and the team thoroughly understand the scope statement.
2. Clearly, understand if it's a Change or a Defect: It's very important that the team clearly understands the problem statement. Identify if it's a new change or a defect in the current system.
3. Size/Complexity of Change or a Defect: Another important step is to identify the size/complexity of the problem, whether it's a small change or a defect that can be easily implemented or does it affect the timeline and budget and should be a part of a separate iteration. An article by Atlassian also talks about the complexity of a feature causing scope creep.
4. Communication: Communication plays a vital role during any project life cycle. When implementing any kind of changes, and if the size and complexity of the change/defect are far bigger, it's always better to clearly communicate that within the team and to the customer. It has to be implemented in a way so that the project documentation, timelines and budget also reflects the same.
5. Embracing the Change: That's the beauty of Agile, to accept the changes. It's very important we keep including the changes while we perform Product Backlog Refinements and within that, the scope statement should reflect if these are big changes to be included within Releases or not.

Many organizations are now following an approach known as a minimal viable product (MVP). Here's an interesting article by LiquidPlanner, that talks about the same. "The key to successful MVP is to plot the value of a feature against the risk of successful implementation."

To conclude, "Changes are assessed throughout the project, and the scope is replanned at the start of each iteration.", given by an article published in AgilePM

Are you balancing work and life?

Friends, I came across a very nice article that talks about handling "work" and your "life". I am not spending much time writing about this article, as people these days know how to manage their work and life. Here's to the Art of Living article, I just came across that talks about experiencing waves of happiness like never before. They say: All actions we undertake in our lives are to make us happy, isn't it!

You are having a bad day at office, or you feel like leaving your job, or lay off stress? Here's another article by a great author published in Business News Daily, inspires me to share about this- "In our digitally driven world, it's imperative to maintain a work-life balance," by Jackie Stone

Below are some points listed for betterment of balancing our work and life:

1. Letting go of Perfectionism: Another article at Forbes shares about tips for better work life balance. The first point they talk about letting go of Perfectionism. We tend to do everything perfectly, if we are unable to, this brings out stress and frustration into our behavior. Letting go of Perfectionism often give us "better" performances at workplace and into our personal lives too.
2. Exercise & Meditate: The most important part of a healthy lifestyle is to keep exercising and meditation plays a vital role in giving a personal inner strength.
3. Create and own your lifestyle: Create your lifestyle and stick to it. When we say lifestyle, it's about what time you wake up, when do you reach your office, when do you start working etc. It's just not a word, it's about how we live our lives.

In the end, as they say, ups and downs are the part of lives, sometimes we have a bad day at office and sometimes we have celebrations!!!

It's all about how we look towards the direction of our lives and how positively we react to it :)

Scrum Check: Are you following Scrum or ScrumBut or None?

According to a recent article by Forbes, "The overall success rate of projects delivered using Scrum reported by respondents is 62%. (Teams of the recommended size for Scrum — seven plus or minus two -- members — report the most frequent success, while smaller and larger teams both report less frequent success.)"

Success rate of any project framework highly depends on the way we are implementing it.

Scrum or ScrumBut?

Organizations have different work cultures, different teams, different project sizes, and different processes. Many of the times, we see that organizations implement Scrum but with some changes to it. We call it- "ScrumBut"

It is when we ask a team, Do you follow Scrum framework? and they say-

"Yes, We follow Scrum but we don't do Retrospective meeting"

Or
"Yes, We follow Scrum but we don't do daily scrum meetings, we meet weekly."

Click here to Learn more about ScrumBut

Friends, if you are implementing Scrum and unsure about it, here is a check for you to determine whether you are really following "Scrum" or "ScrumBut" or "None"?

Scrum Check!

Below is the list of questions, and here is the scenario:

If you answer "Yes" to all of these below, then "Congratulations!!! You are doing a great job with Scrum implementation". 

If you answer, "No to some of them", then it's a "ScrumBut" and not "Scrum"

If you answer, "No to most or all of them", then "Sorry friends, you are not following Scrum".

Scrum Artifacts

• Are you using Product Backlog?
• Do you have a product backlog defined by the Product Owner?
• Is it prioritized by business value by the Product Owner?
• Is it being refined and maintained?
• Are the top items estimated by the team?
• Learn more about Product Backlog here
• Are you using Sprint Backlog?
• Is it estimated and finalized by team members?
• Is approved by the Product Owner?
• Is your Sprint backlog visible to everyone?
• Is your Sprint backlog daily updated for progress?
• Does your Sprint backlog clearly show what is to do, doing and done?
• Learn more about Sprint Backlog here
• Are you using Burn-down charts?
• Are these used within your sprints?
• Are these updated on daily basis?
• Learn more about Burn-down chart here

Scrum Ceremonies

• Sprint Planning Meetings 
• Does Product Owner participate in this meeting?
• Does whole team participate in this meeting?
• Is the Sprint backlog finalized by the end of Sprint Planning meeting?
• Is the Product Owner satisfied with Sprint backlog?
• Does everyone understand Definition of Done (DoD)?
• At the end of this, Does whole team know what their tasks are and what needs to be delivered by the end of the sprint?
• Daily Scrum Meetings
• Is it Time-boxed for 15 minutes? i.e. It should not last more than 15 minutes.
• Is the team talking about progress and impediments?
• Is the team updating Scrum board or any other Scrum tool for progress? (Moving items from To Do to Doing, Doing to Done)
• Is the team updating Burn down chart? 
• Sprint Review Meetings
• Is the product ready for demo according to Definition of Done?
• Is the team giving incremental product demonstration to product owner?
• Is the product owner participating and giving feedback?
• Sprint Retrospective Meetings
• Is it happening at the end of each sprint?
• Are you checking what to Start, Stop and Continue?
• Is your process continuously improving?

Team

• Is your team size less than 9 and more than 5?
• Is your team self-managed?
• Is your team cross-functional?

Iterations

• Are your iterations more than 1 week and less than 4 weeks?
• Are your iterations estimated and planned?

Handling Changes

• Are you managing Scope while welcoming changes?
• Are you not allowing any change within an iteration?
• Are you allowing changes during Product backlog refinement?

Other factors!

• Are you happy with team's performance and having fun?
• Are you all motivated to improve, inspect and adapt?
• Is it resulting in incremental product deliverable?