Scope Creep.

In any kind of project “scope creep” is a term that comes up often. Depending on the kind of project, it may happen rarely or frequently, but in my experience it’s safe to say that there is always a certain level of scope creep, or at the very least, the continuous threat that it may surface.

While scope creep is mostly related to additional development work, further testing required or perhaps another chunk of analysis previously unaccounted for, what I have observed recently is a more subtle kind of scope creep. In fact, it is not even related to the technology or software of our project. Instead, we seem to be suffering some blurring of the boundaries when it comes to our agile scrum process, more specifically the purpose and content of the scrum gatherings.

When we first started working in the scrum module, a great emphasis was placed on making sure we setup the correct cadence of meetings. As per the scrum model, we dutifully setup daily standups, regular retrospectives and sprint planning sessions and of course end of sprint showcases to demonstrate the development completed to our stakeholders for feedback.

The one meeting where I have noticed a big change over the course of the past weeks and months is the showcase. It seems that we slowly but surely move away from the true essence of showing a live demo for the respective scrum teams, so our stakeholders and other teams can see the progress, the decisions made and provide feedback on the same. Instead, it seems the meetings is morphing into more of a general project update session.

Not that getting an update on what other teams are up to is not valuable time for everyone involved, it most certainly is, however I wonder whether the scrum showcase is really the right forum or whether we should try to go back to purely focusing on the demo of new software and put a stop to this new kind of “scope creep”…