How can one improve an IT projects features/design/development definition process if Scrum framework is used?

I suggest one should always try to improve the outcome instead of improving the process. Only then, every inch of your processes will be improved naturally and magically.

Yet, the outcome to be improved is different from one another for each role of Scrum framework.

From a PO perspective

• Always improve the Product itself and try to increase its added value to the users and organisation.
• Make more request refinement (grooming) meeting with the stake-holders and the team.
• Work on backlog often and hard enough so that next 2–3 sprints work on the backlog is Ready according to teams Definition of Ready
• Invest into your PBI’s (user stories). Here is how to invest and the details about the acronym I.N.V.E.S.T. :
• Independent: A PBI should not wait for another to be completed.
• Negotiable: Team can negotiate how to do it. So do not define how to do on your PBI’s, instead define “what to do?” and “why?”
• Valuable: If team doesn’t find a good in developing some feature listen to them and drop that PBI if you are convinced. Remember when someone doesn’t believe shtg is necessary and valuable, then he/she doesn’t care enough, and doesn’t feel the need for investing his/her time to make it better than you ask for at the first place.
• Estimable: Team should be confident on its guesstimate of required time and energy to finish it within a sprint.
• Sizable: Deal with the team to split the PBI into smaller and satisfying INVEST parts to reduce risk of not completing it and maximise the value created with the teams time and effort.
• Testable: This is the most critical and time consuming and yet most useful part for a PO and stake-holders. Because if you want something, you need to specify your acceptance criteria or conditions of satisfaction or your criteria of done. Defining that criteria always spawns new PBI’s, because when you start writing down your acceptance criteria from business perspective you will find yourself writing dozens of criteria meaning that you need to split that PBI into smaller parts where each PBI has a maximum of 3–4 acceptance criteria and each satisfying INVEST criteria again. (By the time you should be tired of even reading this very last criteria and understood what I meant by time consuming)

From an SM perspective

Try to improve the team being a superior team. Force them to climb the ladder to the performing stage which is the fourth stage of Tuckmans Team Development Stages model where the output of the team is greater the sum of the output of the individuals.

See the quote below from the original paper:

In performing stage, people can work independently, in subgroups, or as a total unit with equal facility. Their roles and authorities dynamically adjust to the changing needs of the group and individuals. Stage four is marked by interdependence in personal relations and problem solving in the realm of task functions. By now, the group should be most productive. Individual members have become self-assuring, and the need for group approval is past. Members are both highly task oriented and highly people oriented. There is unity: group identity is complete, group morale is high, and group loyalty is intense. The task function becomes genuine problem solving, leading toward optimal solutions and optimum group development. There is support for experimentation in solving problems and an emphasis on achievement. The overall goal is productivity through problem solving and work.

From a Development Team Perspective

Try to improve technical excellence of the product:

• Constantly improve on teams solution design
• Refactor your previous code each and every sprint
• Increase coverage of automated functional tests
• Introduce behaviour driven development
• Introduce Continuous delivery and integration
• Decrease production defects introduced each and every sprint

• Improve completion lead times of committed PBI’s
• To actively manage risks, Increase average Focus Factor Ratio (man-day spent to complete a PBI / lead time of that PBI) over 1, then over 2
• Control WIP(work in progress) within a sprint to enforce a culture where everyone stops starting and starts finishing.

And the rabbit ?? goes, right?