The management made the call. Instead of continuing to work on the massive, RIA plug-in-based application, the multi-year project will now aim to deliver smaller/faster release cycles.
I rather welcome the decision. The previous project (a.k.a FRED) cost so much, in both infrastructure and ongoing development, it actually cost the VP his job in the company. (I won’t go into the details of that). The change actually fits Scrum well. Looking back, the FRED project felt like a BDUF. The design/architecture came from a third-party partner, it had modules that were logically separated-out, but it was completely based on a proprietary technology, instead of standards. Such approach was probably the result of a proper explanation of needs. So after more than a year of implementation, we were left with a brain-child product that did not fit the needs of the business.
Sound like any other requirements mismatch episode? I’m not denying it – in fact I accept that. The only thing that matters now is taking the heap and turning it into gold.
The good news is that, in FRED, we have a benchmark to compare ourselves to. The better news? We just released the first Vertical Slice Component – and it took less than half the budget of FRED, in half the time, to deliver a working product that performs well.
Turning the data we have into an asset and a facilitator of new insights into trends and patterns is the goal we have now, not just matching a spec that may “turn out not to be modular afterall”.
Release 2 is in the works. Sprint 19 comes next.
offthemesh 