In 2011, the word commitment was modified to forecast in the Scrum Guide. Why the change? It is interesting to see how teams and coaches navigate the words and what it means.
Reason For Change
Argument for the changes has been that the business people and others outside of the scrum team have abuse the word. Once a team commits, they have no way out of the commitment. Other than to work extra hours to accomplish the work, and or cut quality. As suggested/proposed/enunciated by Ken Schwaber, quality gets lost as team push to deliver based on commitment. Since it is a forecast, the team are not held hostage to delivering. It allows the team to focus on quality, value and continuous improvement rather than arbitrary obligation.
My Thoughts
I disagree with the change. Let’s bring it outside of software and see it in a different context.
Service Provider Uptime
Let’s suppose company A has the following value statement: We commit to providing an uptime of 99.9% for our customers. Company B has the following value statement: We forecast of providing an uptime of 99.9% for our customers. Which company would you want to do business with? I hope it is Company A. The word ‘commit’ makes a strong statement that the company will do everything it can to provide the level of service. ‘Forecast’ is just not serious enough. It means that Company B is not serious in providing 99.9% uptime.
Marathon Runner
Suppose you wanted to run a marathon and finish in a certain time. You set a goal. Committing to a set time vs. forecasting a set time, produces different behavior and results. If you forecast, you are more likely to be okay with not hitting your goal. If you commit and you miss the goal, you will tend to be not happy. This resulting emotion produces different reaction.
Commit: You can work harder and train harder so that you can achieve the goal.
Forecast: You continue to do what you do and maybe you achieve the goal. No harm done since it is a forecast.
Commitment and Expectation
When a team commits, they are entrusted to do everything that they can to complete the work. Not only that, I also expect that quality is baked into the delivered work. I also expect the team to do the work at a sustainable pace. I do not expect the team to deliver 100% commitment every sprint. If the team commits and delivery 100% all the time, then something is wrong. I expect to see some variance between each sprints similar to a control chart in Six Sigma. If every sprint is 80% of the commitment then the team is under committing. A good team will have sprints that shows some being over and under but the general trend should be in an upward direction. Over time that line may come to a leveling – not straight line – but averaging around a number. This is when teams find their sweet spot. At this sweet spot is where the team can use this velocity to help with better predictability in their estimates. This predictability helps with expectation and trust in the team’s output.
Without commitment from the team, it is hard to get to the sweet spot. Not knowing the sweet spot, prediction or estimates gets harder and that reduces trust.
Close Out
I highly encourage teams to adopt commitment. To me it is part and parcel of continuous improvement. It leads to building trust and breaking down the waterfall walls.
Please let me know what you think in the comments below.
If your team is ‘forecasting’ instead of ‘committing’, what behavior will change if you adopt ‘commitment’?
What challenges will your team face if they commit instead of forecast?
Richard Khor 