Requirements change process Featured

The right way to handle unplanned work during sprint

This is IMPORTANT! This is Urgent! Can you please make this a top priority in the sprint backlog? How many times have you got the same enquiry for a requirement change from the client … I bet many times. This kind of situation can be very stressful for the Scrum Team.

In AVS we pay special attention when it comes to teams capacity. We are handling new requirements in a client-friendly manner trying to achieve a  win-win outcome. AVS has established metric driven reports based on Estimates and actual hours burnt per resource and task complexity during the sprint. We always try to achieve at least 10% of the buffer of available capacity making sure that we can tackle any unforeseen requirements by the customer.

Requirements change process - Educate client
Requirements change process Educate team
PRO TIP

Few tips: make sure that your team is doing regular code refactoring. Keep code version updated. Raise awareness of the technical debt.
These tips can help you accumulate at least 10% of the time in the current sprint. This can make your team flexible in responding to new requests any time even in the middle of the sprint.

Requirements change process done by AVS

In AVS we follow the SCRUM Guide with roles, responsibilities and artefacts defined according to best practices in this branch of the business. We constantly educate our team members about best practices in the SCRUM framework.  In the same manner, we educate our clients about values that we are trying to achieve and produce in the incremental development of their products. 

Do not hesitate to ask your client the following questions:

  • What is the business value of the requirement?
  • What value brings to the product or users?

Once the customer comprehends this kind of question, he will understand how the scoring model and prioritization should work with new requirements. 

We educate our clients about our planning process and the logic behind prioritization. We emphasize the importance that our SCRUM events are time-boxed and that we have a perfect window of opportunity for new requests in our regular Sprint planning events.

In that situation, we are evolving together with our client into one compact team. Synergy is the ingredient helping us stay Transparent, Inspect the products in each iteration and adapt our processes according to an actual situation.