ISerialized .Net, C#, Scrum and agile software development

Focus on the product backlog and business value of Scrum projects

While struggeling on a customer project, I came across a post in Eric Lee's blog The root of all evil in Scrum

We are struggeling on a customer project to get scrum working. I joined the team a couple of months back, when they had allready been scrumming for a while, but I found a SCRUM team in a big crises. Yes they were scrumming (sort of), but as I asked them, why?

To quote Eric Lee: "If you have some kind of required process in place and you can’t succinctly explain exactly how that process enables you to deliver working software in a better, faster, and cheaper manner, then drop the process.  It’s not helping."

I guess one of the biggest problems in the team I joined, was directly related to what he said here. An old project and team, suddenly wanted to start using Scrum, but never spent the necessary time on the product back log, and where does that leave you? In the middle of nowhere! You have no plan, and you certainly don't know where the product owner is headed! The product back log, and the focus on the direct business value is the achilles heel for Scrum!

They are both very tightly coupled, without a real focus on the business value (and the customers need) you can't make a good product backlog, and without a good product backlog it's hard to see the real business value!