Please read and study the case “Introducing Scrum at P2P” in Larson and Gray, 6e, pages 609-613. Please prepare your answers to the following questions (1.5 line spacing, maximum 4 pages) and submit your answer document to Canvas. Please also bring your answers to class for our discussion.
Part A: 1. How well is Scrum working?

The case is basically a tale of two sprints. During the first sprint, Scrum guidelines were adhered to and significant progress was made on the project. The team has evolved into self organizing group and is energized. Unfortunately during the second sprint, the project deviated from Scrum guidelines and the team seems less energized and productivity has declined.

2. What are the issues confronting the Big Foot project?

Prem started off well but as soon as the project experienced trouble during the second sprint he resorted back to the traditional role of project manager as task master. Admittedly there is fine line between coaching and directing, but he needed to play a less assertive role in solving the integration problem. Here, instead of telling the team what to do, he could have poised questions that would have helped them to solve the problem themselves. This is a hard thing to do when you are under time pressure and you are confident you have the answer. He exacerbated the problem by taking control of the daily scrum away from the team. The synergy that had developed during the first sprint dissipated as team members no longer felt personally responsible for their tasks. Not only did motivation suffer, but the project likely suffered by not tapping into the collective expertise of the team.

A second major issue is Prem acquiescing to Isaac’s request to change the work on the second sprint and extending the deadline. This violates one of Scrum’s cardinal rules: no changes are introduced once the sprint backlog