PMP Q #27- Who creates the Iteration plan?
Q27. Who creates the Iteration plan?
A. Project Manager
B. Team
C. Scrum Master
D. Product Owner
So, let’s explore different roles in the context of creating the iteration plan –
Many of you come from a traditional project management background. Whenever the word Plan comes in, you may think planning is the accountability and responsibility of a project manager. So, you pick up the Project Manager whenever the word Plan comes. Not valid in the case of the Agile way of working.
In an Agile way of working, the project managers are more on facilitating space, and the team does detailed level planning, not the project manager.
That’s the idea, so the project manager (Option A ) goes out.
Many of you may say developing the iteration plan is the Scrum Master job. I have seen in my company Scrum Master creates the iteration plan. That might be happening in your company, but that’s not the right thing to do by the Scrum Master. The idea here is Scrum Master creates a self-organising team. A self-organising team should be able to plan their work, execute their work, monitor their work, and adapt their work to achieve the goal. Still, the leadership, project manager, product owner, and whoever is in the leadership space should help them set the goal, direction, and priorities. So, leaders help them identify which product backlog items are the priority items to develop the iteration goal. But after that, planning and executing that is a team’s job.
In this way, option C (Scrum Master) goes out.
So, in this question, we can directly go with the answer B ‘Team’,
Let’s discuss – why not the product owner is the correct answer –
A product owner works closely with the business to determine what is needed next. A Product Owner has great insight into the business and finalises what the team should do next. Still, the planning of that execution is primarily on the team so whenever you see a question related to detailed planning, figure out how I should do my job. In general, you should focus on the team or the individual executing it because the overall essence of modern-day management is self-organising and more and more autonomy for execution to the person doing the job or through the team who is doing the job.
In conclusion, Option B is the right answer – The Team creates the iteration plan.
