robjam.es

Working with clients that are attempting to be Agile in the product/project delivery, I find the toughest battle to win is the one where you are telling them “not to fix scope”. Clients really struggle with this one, “So you are telling me its going to cost X and take Y, but you won’t tell me what you are going to give me!!! Get out of here!”

The crux of the problem here is trust. Trust in the process. If you don’t trust the process, then you are going to struggle with accepting this concept.

My view is to focus on the realities here. So, OK. Lets fix the scope, what is going to happen? Will the project be on time and on budget? I doubt that very much, anyone that has any amount of experience around project/product delivery has experienced at least some level of blown budget or delayedtime lines on all but the most simplest projects. And don’t try and throw projects with umpteen Change Requests to cover your proverbial, and then say that was on time or on budget. Every Change Request would have added cost and/or time to the originally scoped project.

That is why it is prudent to define your scope, and target a scope for a release date. And this is where Agile comes into play. By prioritising the features for the release, the impact of missing some low priority features are going to be minor in comparison to delivering late or costing x% more thananticipated.

So what’s the answer? For me it is by selling the process. Don’t try and sell the idea of fixing scope, but selling the idea that we are going to prioritise the features for the delivery date, and we are going to commit to a release date and a cost. Then get the business to live and breathe the process. Soon enough, you’ll get them loving the process. And then you have a win on your hands.

You will also get them to understand that it didn’t matter that we only delivered 80% of the scoped features. Because in the time that we delivered the current release, more important features have been thrown into the mix that will need to be prioritised for the next release!

What experiences have you had in trying to get your customer to accept a floating scope?