Disclaimer: This is based on my personal experience and I do not argue that this is the only way to work. It is truly my perspectives around project management.
The concept of Scrum is not new to me. I joined the Samvera project called Paged Media Project as a product owner (PO) at the Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) University Library. This project was collaboration between IUPUI University Library, Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) Libraries, and University Information Technology Services (UITS). The project team had adapted the Scrum framework as an agile approach to carry out its massive and collaborative project in order to develop and deliver a better application for page turning digital objects. For this role as PO, I took the Certified Scrum Product Owner training given by the Braintrust Consulting Group in 2016.
I have executed several projects in my career and some of them I found were really successful (so proud that I was part of the team), some of them were just acceptable, while some of them were totally frustrating. One of the successful projects was a website redesign and migration project at IUPUI thanks to the team and my supervisor. We didn’t know the concept of Scrum or agile approach at that time, but on reflection, we adapted naturally the agile approach for our work and projects. When I joined, there was a UX group comprised of 8 members from the library led by a senior administrator. We met occasionally but I found meetings not useful. When there was a chance to reform, I downsized a number of members in the group only for people who actually worked and contributed toward the project, so myself as Digital User Experience (DUX) librarian, senior developer, and digital content specialist. My supervisor fully supported my suggestion and never intervened the ways we worked.
I also had failed projects (maybe according to my criteria) and one of them was even applied the Scrum framework. We followed the 2 weeks sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, product backlog refinement, sprint review, and sprint retrospective and yes, there were scrum master, product owner, and the development team, but still the project didn’t move forward. Sometimes, I was also asked by a senior administrator to provide a report on how to improve (so I did it), but I heard that “I agree with you that there should be improvements, but I think we’re ok for now.” So I couldn’t go further. Maybe I could argue consistently its importance, but no support and with other tasks assigned to me, it was hard for me to keep going (yes, my excuse).
I have realized that there is always a great yet small team with fully committed, cross-functional, and collaborative people for successful projects that I have been involved. For the IUPUI website project, the reason why I downsized was that the group was consisted of mostly stakeholders. They should be invited throughout the entire process, but they don’t need to come to the every single project meeting. It is one of the PO’s responsibilities to bring their input and desires to the development team and communicate with them its progress. In addition, team members were committed, functional, collaborative, and open-minded to changes. It was an iterative-incremental process so we had to quickly adapt new changes based on UX studies, for instance. In addition, the entire process was transparent and each individual had a clear role to play in the team. My supervisor never attended any of those meetings but now I see her role as ScrumMaster. She let us do our work and decide what and how to work without any interference. However, whenever there were barriers, I reported to her and she tried to remove them so that we could complete our projects successfully. I had the best team and supervisor.
Following Scrum framework doesn’t guarantee a project team to do Scrum effectively. I have witnessed some projects with the Scrum methodology have failed. This is not because of Scrum itself, rather more about how it was applied. Scrum has lots of meetings to keep track, prioritize to meet stakeholders’ needs, and consistently improve for both product and process. However, if these meetings are used to provide an assortment to say that we are doing Scrum, rather than utilizing its true potential values, projects are more likely to fail. One of my projects that I participated as PO, often times, I heard from the development team that “I don’t have time to work on this project. I did other tasks,” so I reported to the ScrumMaster about no commitment from the development team, but he said that “We participate in this project to learn because everyone talks about. No commitment but we hope to finish this project maybe in 3-5 years.” The scrum master was also their supervisor. This is not clearly Scrum at all although there were all Scrum elements in the project management.
I think that Scrum works really well when there is a great team who is able to complete and make a decision, but also there is a clear shared vision of why we do this work as a team, not individual. Based on my experience, this helps a team to cohesively work together, focus on goals and users (not our satisfaction, e.g., I am satisfied to finish it although this wasn’t what users needed), and complete on time. There are 5 Scrum values: Courage, Commitment, Focus, Openness, and Respect. No scientific or statistical analysis supported so it would be correlation, not causation, but I found that without no clear vision, it is difficult to exercise these values. I had projects where there was no clear vision and this allowed one of the members to misinterpret the entire project, so nothing completed on time.
UX is not one of the Scrum elements even though Scrum values input from all stakeholders, but I think that it is important to incorporate UX components into the projects: from user studies to find out their needs and wants to iterative testings to make sure that products or services are fully realized for their needs and wants. There is a famous quote that “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” In my opinion, it’s half-true, half-wrong. Again based on my experience, it really depends on how questions are constructed and where to look for sources. If I simply ask what users want, I don’t get any valuable answers or opinions. However, there are ways to discover what users want and need. Recently, my institution successfully launched a new Group Study Room Booking system and I incorporated UX processes to every step in the project. I worked with René Duplain (Research Librarian - GIS) and Anne Le-Huu Pineault (Teaching & Learning Librarian at Oxford College of Emory University) to conduct various UX testings and analyze datasets collected from different analytic tools (we should be careful though how we use these datasets) and this prevented the development team’s pre-assumption that it’s enough to be ok according to their opinions.
Currently, there is ongoing discussion about my job description at my work due to reorganization. I am really excited to be an Open Scholarship and Digital Initiatives (OSDI) librarian under the OSDI unit (I had waited almost for 1.5 years to come true!). Since this is a new division for the organization, nothing is yet well-established, but everything is open and possible. In addition, I am so glad to work with such great colleagues like Jeanette Hatherill and Mélanie Brunet more closely under supervision of Daniel Godon. One thing I’d like to apply from Scrum is to create a strong and shared vision for our unit and UX components. I’d like to replicate a study done by Bianca Kramer and Jeroen Bosman to do an environmental scan to understand how our researchers conduct their studies (e.g., tools, processes, and etc.). Initially, I wanted to do sort of Open Scholarship series, but I couldn’t find any information on their needs and wants. In order to better support them, it is necessary to know where they are and how we could help practice more open scholarship and advance their career. Honestly, everything is not clear but I am excited for this new opportunity and hope to make a case to practice Scrum for the upcoming projects for the OSDI.