Scrum, the most popular Agile framework, has seen significant growth in adoption over the past few years. According to the annual State of Agile report from Digital AI, Scrum adoption surged from 58% to an impressive 87% of Agile teams between 2020 and 2022. This trend reflects the effectiveness and benefits that Scrum brings to organizations seeking to enhance value delivery.
While Scrum's popularity continues to soar, many teams are still suffering from unnecessary dependencies which slow value delivery across the organization. A dependency refers to a situation where one task, Product Backlog item, user story, or feature relies on another for completion or integration. Dependencies slow value delivery, because a task which depends upon another cannot be completed until the dependency has been satisfied. Dependencies can arise due to various reasons, such as technical constraints or resource availability. The most common root cause for dependencies is a narrow Product Definition.
Dependencies Slow Value Delivery
When products are defined too narrowly within an organization, they can inadvertently foster unnecessary dependencies. This occurs when teams are isolated in their respective domains, lacking the cross-functional capabilities to tackle tasks independently. As a result, they become reliant on other teams to complete their work, creating a web of dependencies that slows down the overall value delivery process.
Below are the top five negative impacts that dependencies can have on the organization:
1. Proliferation of Product Backlogs
Narrowly defined teams can lead to a proliferation of Product Backlogs focused on a narrow slice of value delivery. While this approach may seem like it enhances focus, it can have unintended consequences. This approach can lead to a gridlock of conflicting priorities across the organization where work that is high priority for one team may be considered low priority by another. These conflicting priorities can lead to confusion on which work is really the most important from an organizational perspective.
2: Unnecessary Handoffs
When teams operate in isolation, handoffs between teams become frequent. This handoff process introduces delays and potential miscommunications, slowing down the progress of the value delivery. Additionally, information scatter occurs when knowledge is distributed unevenly across teams, making it harder to resolve issues and make informed decisions. This, coupled with a high inventory of product backlog items, creates a backlog bloat that further hampers the delivery of value.
3: Loss of Customer and Whole-Product Focus
