Pick One Of The Following Discussion Questions For Your Foru ✓ Solved

Pick one of the following discussion questions for your foru

Pick one of the following discussion questions for your forum post. State the question you have chosen. Options: 1) What projects in your experience would have been suitable for Scrum? Describe the project and why it might be suitable. 2) What culture changes would have to occur for Scrum to be implemented in your organization? Describe in detail the characteristics needing to change. 3) What parts of Scrum would help traditional project management methodology? Explain why. Provide an initial post (minimum 150 words) and reply to two classmates with replies of at least 100 words each.

Paper For Above Instructions

Initial Forum Post — Question Chosen

Chosen question: What culture changes would have to occur for Scrum to be implemented in your organization?

Implementing Scrum requires more than new meetings and artifacts; it requires cultural transformation toward collaboration, empowerment, learning, and customer focus. First, leadership must shift from command-and-control to servant-leadership, empowering teams to make technical and process decisions (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020). This change reduces micromanagement, speeds decision-making, and enables teams to take ownership of outcomes (Kotter, 1996). Second, the organization must prioritize iterative delivery and feedback over exhaustive upfront planning. That means accepting smaller, incremental deliveries and learning cycles (Highsmith, 2009). Third, psychological safety and an outcomes-oriented mindset are critical: teams need permission to experiment, fail fast, and adapt without fear of punitive consequences (Edmondson, 1999). Fourth, a shift to cross-functional teams and shared accountability replaces siloed specialized groups; developers, testers, UX, and product representatives must collaborate daily to deliver increments (PMI, 2017). Finally, quality must be embedded into each increment through a Definition of Done, continuous integration, and automated testing rather than deferred to a late testing phase (Fowler, 2006). These cultural shifts—servant leadership, iterative delivery, psychological safety, cross-functionality, and built-in quality—align with Scrum’s empirical pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation and are essential for Scrum to succeed in practice (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020).

Reply to Niyati (on culture changes and quality)

Niyati, I agree that elevating quality as a cultural priority is fundamental for Scrum adoption. When quality becomes a shared value, people take pride in their work and organizational trust grows, as you noted. To operationalize that cultural change, I would recommend concrete practices: define a clear Definition of Done that includes code review, automated tests, and acceptance criteria; integrate continuous integration and automated build pipelines so defects are detected early; and use quality metrics (e.g., escape rate, defect density) as learning tools rather than blame instruments (Fowler, 2006; Duvall, Matyas, & Glover, 2007). This approach reduces the tendency to meet deadlines at the cost of quality by making quality visible and measurable. In addition, create short feedback loops with stakeholders through sprint reviews to verify that increments meet real needs rather than only schedule targets (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020). Finally, pair quality emphasis with psychological safety so teams feel safe to surface technical debt and propose necessary refactoring (Edmondson, 1999). These combined changes help ensure that Scrum’s iterative cadence genuinely improves product quality and team morale.

Reply to Akhil (on suitability of Scrum/Kanban for front-end UX project)

Akhil, your front-end enhancement project sounds well suited to Agile approaches. Your description—co-located cross-functional team, frequent change requests, and a need for stakeholder feedback—matches conditions where Scrum or Kanban can add value (Cohn, 2010). Scrum would provide fixed-length iterations for producing usable prototypes and regular sprint reviews to get stakeholder feedback, helping to catch UX issues early. Kanban could be suitable if work is highly interrupt-driven and continuous flow is preferred; its WIP limits help visualize bottlenecks (Anderson, 2010). Given your project had many change requests and a rigid waterfall plan, I would suggest a hybrid approach: use short Scrum sprints to deliver incremental UX prototypes with a definition of ready/done, and employ a Kanban board for rapid bug fixes and production support. Introduce lightweight acceptance testing with user metrics (task completion rates, clicks-to-task) to validate UX improvements quantitatively (Nielsen, 1994). Finally, establish automated visual regression tests and CI to reduce post-deployment fixes. These practices reduce turnaround time, improve stakeholder alignment, and make UX improvements empirical and measurable (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020).

Synthesis and Implementation Recommendations

To operationalize the cultural changes above, organizations should pursue a phased transformation: 1) Leadership alignment and training on servant leadership and empirical process control (Kotter, 1996); 2) Pilot Scrum in one or two teams with coaching and measurable goals; 3) Introduce engineering practices—CI/CD, automated testing, and refactoring—that enable sustainable pace and quality (Fowler, 2006); 4) Establish cross-functional teams and stable sprint cadences with regular retrospectives to drive continuous improvement (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020). Use change management frameworks (Kotter; Lewin’s unfreeze-change-refreeze) to communicate vision, remove impediments, and institutionalize new norms (Lewin, 1947). Finally, measure progress with both outcome metrics (customer satisfaction, lead time, quality) and cultural indicators (psychological safety surveys, team autonomy) to validate that the culture is shifting in support of Scrum practices (Rigby, Sutherland, & Takeuchi, 2016).

Conclusion

Scrum is more effective when cultural conditions—servant leadership, iterative learning, psychological safety, cross-functionality, and built-in quality—are present. Concrete engineering practices and a staged change plan, backed by leadership commitment and measurement, help convert these cultural aspirations into daily team behaviors that enable Scrum to deliver consistent value (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020; PMI, 2017).

References

  1. Anderson, D. J. (2010). Kanban: Successful evolutionary change for your technology business. Blue Hole Press.
  2. Cohn, M. (2010). Succeeding with Agile: Software development using Scrum. Addison-Wesley.
  3. Duvall, P. M., Matyas, S., & Glover, A. (2007). Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk. Pearson.
  4. Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
  5. Fowler, M. (2006). Continuous Integration. martinfowler.com. Retrieved from https://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html
  6. Highsmith, J. (2009). Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products. Addison-Wesley.
  7. Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading Change. Harvard Business Review Press.
  8. Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in Group Dynamics: Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change. Human Relations, 1(1), 5–41.
  9. PMI & Agile Alliance. (2017). Agile Practice Guide. Project Management Institute.
  10. Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2020). The Scrum Guide. Scrum.org & ScrumInc. Retrieved from https://scrumguides.org/

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