How scrum teams can better manage unplanned work

1. 1
How to Manage Unplanned Work
Using “Interrupt Buffer”

2. Abdul-Malik Muhaimin/Senior Director-Agile Practice
Organizations InitiativesFun Fact:
Served 8 proud years in
the United States Air Force
Weights and Measures
Permitting System

3. 3
As a Scrum Team,
I Need a plan for interrupts,
so that my team can be more predictable

4. 4
Handling Interrupt Buffer

5. 5
Interrupt Pattern in New Product Development Teams
8
5
3
5
5
5
3
5
5
8
Product
Backlog
P
O
MI
Implementations
PHS Request
Now
Later
Low Priority
Beginning of sprint
8
5
5
3
Sprint
Backlog
Kaizen 3
5
Buffer
10pts
Velocity = 39 SP
Stories = 29 SP
Buffer = 10 SP

6. 6
IMPORTANT !!!!!!
Once you hit your planned buffer for your sprint..DO NOT TAKE
ON ANY MORE NEW UNPLANNED WORK

7. 7
Scrum Emergency Procedure
(Suggestions)
How to respond when ALL HELL Breaks Loose !!!
• INNOVATE – Try something different
• Example: can we create a tool or train other scrum
teams to do what they keep asking us to do for them
• OFFLOAD SPRINT BACKLOG- get someone else to do it
• Example: engage one of the engineering managers
who are free and know that particular technology to
do some work from the sprint backlog
• REDUCE SCOPE in collaboration with the Product Owner
• Example: Through discussion with PO/PM/Team decide
to cut work from the current sprint
• **ABORT THE SPRINT (last resort)– end the sprint and
conduct an emergency sprint planning session and re-plan
the remaining Sprint to achieve a revised sprint goal

8. 8
• The actual buffer amount (set aside of story points) is something that each individual team will
come up with.
• Sometimes timelines are so tight the Product Owner may decide that there will be no Buffer that
will set aside for unplanned work. We must respect that decision.
• NO ONE….NO ONE, should be going directly to engineers or QA to ask them to do something. All
planned/unplanned work must be routed through the Product Owner.
• Remember you only have a certain allocation for buffer available, so be thoughtful when using it.
Once its gone, its GONE.
• In those situations where its getting close to the end of the sprint and the Buffer has not been
used, then the team can discuss what else they could do to use up that extra capacity (example:
code refactoring, bug fixing, assisting QA with some test case execution..etc)
Things to keep in mind
NOTE: In order to get any of this to work Senior Leadership/Account Management/Sales..etc has to support it. They have to push back
when they are being pressured by client to do all these last-minute requests