The Vision in Scrum Development : Studying the Challenges of the Vision in Practice

Abstract: Scrum is one of the agile software development processes that is used by practitioners. The practitioners often agree upon a vision in these processes. The vision can help to create a shared understanding in the team and gives direction to the software development projects. The vision is not a part of the Scrum process but essential for the software development. This research studied how practitioners describe the vision in Scrum projects and experienced problems with creating the software related to the vision. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Swedish IT practitioners working in Scrum projects, which have different roles in the software development. Many of them were setting the requirements, deciding the design and developing the code. The participants worked on different types of products. Results show that the vision is described in various ways by the practitioners. Some practitioners refer to the vision as the goals of the project, while others refer to the end-product. All practitioners mentioned that the vision is important in the project. Even though the vision is perceived as important, practitioners face challenges in their Scrum development projects. One of the challenges faced was that the vision was often not communicated or externalized in a way that the team could reflect upon, this made it hard for the team to understand the bigger picture. This was especially important for the user experience designers. One of the challenges found is related to the different end-states of the product is that changes of the product are not always supported by the people in the process. The changes that take place in the projects are often incremental and not iterative in nature. This leads to optimizing the current design and not getting the right design. Creating and actively sharing the vision is important for teams in software development. Practitioners should consider creating various visions that can be used for exploration and evaluation of the possibilities. This can support consistent decision-making and a holistic approach to the system.