Another great and important question about Lean Inception, Scrum and Agile cascade., by Guino Henostroza
Question: Many Scrum people criticize things like inceptions or sprint 0 because they say that it is kind of or a lag from waterfall times. They say that all work (including architecture, infrastructure) should be done into a sprint. Maybe in the first sprints delivering low features and then in the next sprints delivering more and more sprints when scope, architecture and others are clear. Do you think Lean Inception used with Scrum is a sort of Agile Cascade?
Answer: Not really. I don´t think Lean Inception used with Scrum is a sort of Agile Cascade. Lean Inception is about defining what to do. What should be the MVP. It´s about aligning a group of people (usually tech, UX and business about the minimum viable). Scrum is about working efficiently on building it.
And a good alignment is super important before starting anything, even if doing it very efficiently. I´ve worked on great Scrum teams doing great work that should have never been done in first place. Usually this happened because there was no Lean Inception, and the team just started working, without an initial alignment, an initial direction, the business hypothesis, the minimum to prove a point or to get started on a good path.
But I agree with you. Work (including architecture, infrastructure) should be done into a sprint, in every sprint. Prematurely defining the HOW-TO about the work is bad. The how-to should be part of the Sprints, not defined in any inception. Lean Inception is only about the WHAT, specially the initial WHAT that helps the team validate the business hypothesis and the initial path for the initiative.
