Which delivery process is your team actually following?
Twelve questions about how your team really works. You get the process your answers describe, how it compares with the one you named, and the control it depends on.
- 12 questions
- 3 areas
- about 5 minutes
- stays in your browser
What's included
One naming question and twelve scored questions across three areas, about five minutes to work through:
1. Cadence and flow
- How work is planned and how much gets taken on
- What happens when urgent work lands mid-cycle
- What you actually measure
2. Roles and decisions
- Who orders the work
- Who can stop new work entering
- Whether retrospectives change anything
3. Scope and the business around you
- How scope and funding are set
- How many teams share the product
- What kind of work fills most of your week
You get: the process your answers point to, set against the one you named at the start, the control that process relies on to stop over commitment, and whether you currently have it. There are six possible results: Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, SAFe, stage-gated (waterfall or PRINCE2 style), and unmanaged flow.
Who it's for
This diagnostic is for people who suspect the process on the wall is not the process in the room.
- CTOs and technical directors who inherited a team that says it does Scrum and want to know whether it really does.
- Delivery leads and Scrum Masters whose sprints carry over every fortnight and who want an objective way to show why.
- Founders and managing directors who were told the team is agile but still get fixed dates, fixed scope and surprises.
- Product owners who cannot plan releases because work keeps arriving from every direction.
If you have ever said "we do Scrum" and felt slightly unsure, this will tell you what you are really doing and what that means.
The diagnostic
0 of 13 answered
0 of 13 answered
How to answer: pick the option closest to what happens in a normal fortnight, not what the process document says should happen.
Questions about this diagnostic
Why does it matter what we call our process?
- Because each process comes with its own brake. Scrum limits work through a sprint commitment set against measured velocity. Kanban limits it through work in progress limits. Stage-gated delivery limits it through change control. If you run one process under another's name, you tend to judge yourself by the rules of the one you named and use the controls of neither.
What is unmanaged flow?
- It is the result when work is pulled in continuously, nothing limits how much is in progress, and nobody has the standing to say no. It usually calls itself Scrum. It is the most common result in teams that are struggling, and the easiest to fix once it has been named.
We scored as a hybrid. Is that bad?
- No. If two results are within three points of each other you are running a hybrid, which is normal. The useful question is whether you chose the hybrid deliberately and whether you have the controls from both sides.
Should we switch to the process we scored as?
- Not necessarily. The first step is to call what you do by its real name and add the control it relies on. Once that is stable, you can decide deliberately whether to move towards something else.
Where does PRINCE2 fit?
- PRINCE2 is a project governance framework rather than a delivery method. It is often wrapped around agile delivery. In this diagnostic it scores under stage-gated, because its stages, tolerances and board behave that way from the team's point of view.