Typical business process includes many steps related to different roles. In terms of Scrum that means different tasks inside same team or even involvement of several teams. Is it possible to describe BP and use the Scrum for its execution?
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BPM isn't a project management framework. It also says nothing about how steps are implemented. Why is this an issue, and why do you feel there's a disconnect?– Todd A. Jacobs ♦Jul 6, 2020 at 14:58
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@Todd A. Jacobs, does Scrum or BPM say something about there is cannot be connection between them? I feel disconnection when it comes to process execution: how it must be shared in terms of Scrum. What are the "best practises" of execution BPs using Scrum?– AseNJul 6, 2020 at 15:21
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Scrum is a development framework; BPM is a modeling framework for business processes. While you might assert that development is a business process, flowcharting Scrum below the event layer actively works against agile self-organizing principles. So I wouldn't go any deeper than labeling a step as "Scrum development" and leaving it at that. If you treat Scrum as an assembly line that can be accurately modeled by a fixed decision tree, you're just begging for headaches IMHO.– Todd A. Jacobs ♦Jul 6, 2020 at 15:29
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@ Todd A. Jacobs, no doubt, but let me then go a little bit deeper: what if there are some tasks which I would like to have executed via process in order to simplify the way of its execution? Should team have 2 methodologies (Scrum and whatever-methodology-to-execute-processes)?– AseNJul 6, 2020 at 15:37
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1In any process model, there are "boxes" that don't have detailed procedures. As long as you treat Scrum as a black box, feel free to throw it into your model. If you try to be either prescriptive or exhaustive in your modeling of the Scrum process, you end up misleading the audience about the accuracy of your model or straitjacketing the agile process with formalisms. Your mileage in that regard is highly unlikely to vary.– Todd A. Jacobs ♦Jul 6, 2020 at 16:02
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1 Answer
The idea seems to make sense, as you mention, there are different roles and tasks. But the management of a project is, in my opinion, more like a Case (see Case Management Modeling Notation (CMMN)) and not a Business Process in the standard definition of BPMN fixed activities, input, output, and gateways according to those outputs.
Also, if you follow a relatively flat hierarchy, you will not have so many roles in your team and the work will be more a collaborative effort than a "single assignee" per task.
This being said, there could be situations where a more structured BPM process can be applied, but typically don't, as far as I have seen. I can imagine a scenario of using Scrum and BPM maybe in other industry different than software engineering.
There are some Scrum practices that BPMN could easily enable for example daily meetings, as a BPM process can give us the tasks in execution, what was executed yesterday, what can be probably executed tomorrow, and by whom. But again, this is also solved by Project management tools with Kanban support In any case, these kinds of processes should allow the inclusion of ad-hoc tasks on any step of the flow.
So, even if is possible, if we are talking about a pure BPM process, the management of its execution requires an approach more closely to this discipline than Scrum, because is not focused only on the execution of particular tasks but in the improvement of the process itself, through design, execution, monitoring and improving, what is called the BPM lifecycle.
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Interesting, is there any idea how to manage repetitive tasks (fixed activities) in Scrum then? Each time create a bunch of same tasks in the same order?– AseNJul 6, 2020 at 14:02
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@AseN Scrum is not a good fit for ongoing or repetitive processes where there's no actual iterative or incremental evolution. It's designed as an empirical control process for product development, and while you can sometimes abuse it for non-development things, other frameworks are often better fits for service delivery.– Todd A. Jacobs ♦Jul 6, 2020 at 14:54
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@Todd A. Jacobs, totally agree. Bad thing is that sometimes scrum team have to deal with repetitive tasks (and this is not scrum metting or retrospective).– AseNJul 6, 2020 at 15:12
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For repetitive tasks there is no recipe in Scrum, but you can create a time-boxed task. I used to use checklists for my daily PM tasks and go through them for around 25-30 mins: - Check customer emails - Do some peer code review - Close done issues - Review status of code coverage report in Sonar - etc. But they are more like common management tasks and not specific to the project. Jul 9, 2020 at 19:20