Framework Selection Playbook

Overview

Which framework is right for your Team?

Your selected framework should provide a 'frame' within which you do 'work', but if the framework doesn't align with the Team's context then they can struggle to deliver and it becomes more of a burden than a frame.

The framework selection workshop is a quick way to select an appropriate framework and align all team members to a shared understanding of why it was chosen and how it serves them.

There are 6 steps in completing this Playbook:

Preparation
Set the context
Sources of work
Work visualisation
Prioritisation
Agree and move on

Participants

Team
Product Owner
Scrum Master

Difficulty

2 - Easy

Duration

30 minutes to 1 hour

Materials

Framework Selection Canvas

Preparation

Preparing for the Framework Selection Workshop will inform the conversation and make it easier to arrive at a shared understanding of why the selected framework makes sense for your Team's context.

Ensure you have the relevant details of the work your Team has recently completed and the work that they have coming up:

What proportion of the Team's recent work was planned compared to the work that just emerged and needed to be done immediately?
How much of the work coming up is visible? Does it all come from a road map or release plan?
How is work prioritised? Is it mostly by value? Or is it mostly by urgency?

Set the context

Setting the context involves sharing the intent and purpose of the workshop so participants understand why it is valuable, the outcome we want to achieve together and how we will go about it.

PRO TIP!

Add P.O.P. to your workshop invitation.

Purpose:

Why are we coming together

Outcome:

What outcome do we seek

Process:

How will we collaborate to achieve the outcome

Sources of work

The first section of the worksheet involves a discussion about how work arrives.

How much of the work that arrives with your team is planned? When work arrives we take it into our backlog, break it down, refine the detail and plan for its delivery.
How much of your work is unplanned? When work arrives we need to get on with it pretty much straight away.

Ask participants in your workshop to place a dot where they believe the proportion of work arrives.

If they think all their work can be planned, then they would place their dot on the right side of the box.
If they think that the way work arrives means we just have to get on with it, then they would place their dot on the left side of the box.
If they think there is a mix in the way work arrives, they would place their dot somewhere in between the ends of the box according to the proportions as they see them.

Work visualisation

The work visualisation section of the worksheet is about how you make upcoming work visible.

How much of your future work is visible through a road map and/or release plan?
How much of your future work is it simply not possible to make visible through a road map or release plan?

Ask participants in your workshop to place a dot to indicate how they view the visibility of future work.

If they think all future work is visible through a release plan or road map they would place their dot on the right side of the box.
If they think that future work cannot be made visible, then they would place their dot on the left side of the box.
If they think there is a mix in how much future work can be made visible, they would place their dot somewhere in between the ends of the box.

Prioritisation

The prioritisation section of the worksheet is about how you determine your priorities.

Are priorities determined using some sort of value assessment?
Are priorities largely set by urgency or SLAs?

Ask participants in your workshop to place a dot to indicate how they view the way work is prioritised.

If they think all work is prioritised using a value based approach such as Weighted Shortest Job First or Customer/Business Value, then they would place their dot on the right side of the box.
If they think all work is prioritised using an urgency based approach such as First In First Out or Service Level Agreements, then they would place their dot on the left side of the box.
If they think there is a mix work prioritisation approaches , they would place their dot somewhere in between the ends of the box.

Agree and move on

Now it time to agree on the framework that best suits your team based on what has been made visible.

If most of the dots added were on the right, then Scrum will suit your team well.

If most of the dots added were on the left, then Kanban may suit your team better.

If you have a few dots around the middle of the canvas, then you may be in the Scrumban zone and needing to apply the best elements of both Scrum AND Kanban to best support your Team.