We're building a website to manage our company asset, and apply Agile/Scrum to this project.
We started with the Product backlog as in attachment.
We planned to start the first Sprint but the team concern about system requirement – things outside PB such as hardware/software architect, database design, security, user role/permission,.. They said without these requirement, they cannot start.
So, may questions are:
1. Our PB is a good one
2. Do we need to conduct System specification. If yes, how detail it needs and when to conduct it (before or after getting user story)?
I thank you very much.
Best Answer
You can start with that backlog. Anything the team needs to address the priority issues, it can put forward in the first planning session as stories. These will be included in the stories taken aboard for the first sprint.
The whole point of SCRUM is to communicate as you go and to do what is required when it is needed, in a transparent way. Saying "we cannot start until we get the requirements spelled out to us" is waterfall. It is up to the team to get those requirements if they are not there and make it count as work.
There are several approaches possible. The team could agree to just create something to their best judgement and show it to the PO to get feedback, then iterate. This is one way to get the specs clear. The team could also try to find fully documented agreement before it starts writing any code. The latter approach would not be considered very agile but it could still fit SCRUM. Whichever way is chosen, finding agreement on a feature is work and requires interaction with stakeholders. Sitting back as a team waiting for a signed document is definitely not agile and not SCRUM.