Empirical Process Control vs. Defined Process Control

One of the reasons Scrum remains as powerful as an agile framework is due to the way it implements an Empirical Process Control instead of a defined process control. These two forms of creating solutions take vastly different approaches in the way they structure development and planning.

Empirical Process Control

An Empirical Process Control utilizes an iterative process with constant improvements to develop solutions. It bases the process on agile fundamentals. By using an iterative process you promote inspection and adaptation into each individual step as your team furthers their understanding of the issues you’re seeking a solution to. This results in a stronger overall process that constantly receives improvements.

Through using Empirical Process Control, your team can create solutions in a fast-paced environment without requiring an extensive breakdown of tasks. Instead, this form of process control relies on your team to develop the solution as they proceed based on past performance. This allows for rapid changes as the issues unfold and your team learns more with each solution they create.

Defined Process Control

When using a Defined Process Control, your leader creates a defined process with discrete steps to come up with a solution to the issue. Your team then follows these steps in a linear fashion, rarely moving backwards to a previous step even if they find a better option. This prevents your team from employing agile fundamentals such as continuous improvement. It also makes it more difficult to improve on your processes as it typically follows the same set of steps for every project. This leaves little room for changes to be made as there are almost always more projects in the pipeline.

Empirical Process Control - Scrum Principles

Have you ever wondered how decisions are made in the Scrum project? Empirical Process Control These are made usually upon experiments and observation instead of upfront planning. This type of process control relies mainly on lucidity, inspection and acclimatization.

These are explained in Empirical Process Control brief as follows:

     a)      Lucidity: With lucidity, anyone can observe every aspect of the Scrum project. Empirical Process Control This encourages the easy and transparent information flow in the entire organization and it creates an open work culture.  Transparency is represented using :

·         Relics :

Project vision statement

Set up product backlog

Issue planning schedule

                  ·         Meetings : Sprint review and daily stand up

·         Information Radiators :  Scrum board and burn down charts

     b)      Inspection:  This is represented through:

·         Common scrum board as well as other information radiators.

·         Collect feedback from customer as well as other stakeholders, create scheduled product backlog, etc.

·         Approve deliverables from the product owner as well as the customer in demonstrating and validating the sprint process.

     c)       Acclimatization:   This takes place as the Scrum core team and stake holders learn through lucidity and inspection. Then, they adapt by making alterations in the work they are doing. In Scrum project, acclimatization is represented through:

-          Stand up meetings

-          Constant risk identification

-          Change in requests

-          Scrum Guidance Body

-          Retrospect Sprint Meeting

Scrum works due to its adherence to the Agile principles Empirical Process Control of value based growth delivery by collecting the feedback from customer and accepting the change.  This leads to quick time to market, avail better delivery, and increase customer responsiveness, change direction by managing the alterations in priorities, improved software quality and risk management.

Basically, Empirical Process Control is used to handle complex processes which are not very well understood.  So, how it is defined?

Empirical Process is seen as a black box, the outputs are evaluated for its inputs and outputs.  We have daily scrums, sprint planning meeting, review meeting and sprint retrospective.  Each sprint retrospective is time boxed, checkpoints will always occur at a predefined time.

Inspection is done at each check point. This will allow you to adapt the process with the collected information.  Another important aspect is the process model that is directly derived from the outside. This is the reason there’s no need to add more backlog items to a sprint as compared to the last sprint.

We All Know Scrum Is An Empirical Process But Is It A Defined Process?

Defined process is derived from first principles which mean it must adhere to the laws of the nature as well as other fundamental and defined laws.  Another description is that in description model, every piece of work is understood.

With a well- defined set of inputs, same set of outputs is generated every time. In the real world, there will be a variance but to a minimum. The feedback is not needed because you are aware about what to do next.

In a nutshell:

Scrum is an Empirical Process.  The empirical process control basically relies on three pillars: Lucidity, Inspection and Acclimatization. To know more about empirical process control, get in touch with lean agile training.