Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • Quality Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Robert Allen 2 Comments

Lessons from Scrum for Product Development Teams

Lessons from Scrum for Product Development Teams

In a previous article, we explored agile product development with a focus on early product validation.

There are additional key enablers from agile/scrum that can be borrowed and applied to any product development process, however.

In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the role & responsibility for scrum masters vs. project managers/core team leaders.

Let’s start with (all) the basic scrum roles:

  • Product Manager
  • Scrum Master – enable scrum workflow key practices including self-directed, self-organized teams, goal focused, prioritized backlogs, iterative/adaptive planning, stakeholder/customer feedback, daily stand-up meetings, measured progress, retrospective process after each sprint
  • Cross-Functional Development Team

For a product development team, we’ll use a team structure from previous articles.

  • Project Approval Committee
  • Opportunity Champion
  • Core Team Leader (CTL) – leads cross-functional development team through the product development lifecycle (PLC) process
  • Project Manager – partners with the CTL and provides the discipline of project management, facilitates the PLC process
  • Cross-Functional Development Team

Let’s compare key enablers of a scrum master with enablers of a CTL/PM for a larger waterfall project:

Scrum Master (Scrum/Agile Process) CTL / PM (PLC Process)
Scrum workflow PLC process workflow
Self-directed, self-organized teams Core team and extended team members
Goal focused Focused on PLC phase gate completion
Prioritized backlogs Critical to quality characteristics and requirements
Iterative/adaptive planning Gate reviews
Stakeholder/customer feedback Requirements validation
Daily stand-up meetings Core team meetings
Measured progress Project planning, execution and monitoring
Retrospective process after each sprint Gate 6 Review (project retrospective gate)

Of course, we don’t want to claim we’re applying agile/scrum when we’re really not.  However, the scrum master role and responsibility, as well as key enablers, are similar to an effective PLC process and partnership between a core team leader and project manager.  Scrum process knowledge can therefore be a valuable addition to virtually any project or project manager skillset.

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, agile product validation, customer value, Human Resource Management, lean product development, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, portfolio analysis, project approval committee, project governance, Project Management, requirements management, scrum, scrum master

About Robert Allen

Robert Allen has over 25 years of professional experience in the areas of product development, process improvement and project management. Rob was a key contributor to numerous deployments of lean sigma and project management organizations, most notably with Honeywell and TE Connectivity. Included in Rob’s experience are multiple certifications and over 25 years of practice in the development, teaching, execution, and leadership of product lifecycle, lean product development, DFSS, lean six sigma, project management, systems engineering and supply chain.

« Stop Wasting My Time! The War on N-VAN!
Control Loops — Masters of Automatic Control »

Comments

  1. LeakedfromAccendoreliability LeakedfromAccendoreliability says

    July 8, 2018 at 10:12 PM

    Hi Robert,

    Could you comment on why you chose to compare the *overall* cycles of agile/waterfall with each other?

    Wouldn’t it make more sense to consider to attack the individual gates of the waterfall cycle with the tools of agile/scrum? The gate lists some deliverables/milestones, which could be considered as an initial backlog. For example.

    Reply
    • Robert Allen says

      July 9, 2018 at 5:42 AM

      Stefan,
      Good comment and your approach does have some merit, however, it might be better to describe your suggested approach as ‘goal-based planning’ rather than applying agile/scrum to individual gates of the waterfall cycle. The reason is, agile/scrum is a continuous loop of incremental changes (usually software changes) or a series of changes (a sprint) with tasks that might consist of (for example) design, code, code review, code coverage test, integration test. In waterfall each phase is unique (for example) concept, detailed design, verification, qualification…therefore there is no continuous loop and the ‘changes’ are major phases of development, not smaller iterations. You are correct, each phase can have a backlog but not necessarily a prioritized list since it all needs to get done. Hope this helps and thanks for your feedback!

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Articles by Rob Allen
in the Product Development and Process Improvement series

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Join PD&PI

Your email is safe and the opt-in here provides your permission to send messages concerning the PD&PI article list plus special announcements. Privacy Policy

Recent Posts

  • test
  • test
  • test
  • Your Most Important Business Equation
  • Your Suppliers Can Be a Risk to Your Project

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy