20
votes
What techniques can identify missing requirements?
I'm not entirely sure if that is still "project management", but what has helped me in my developer role is to actually take a day and do the work that my program is supposed to improve.
...
- 8,790
15
votes
Accepted
Should I leave building the database for the end?
It is worrying that you have no why part to your user stories. This is an important element of the user story format as it allows us to evaluate the stories and to prioritise them. It appears that you ...
- 19.6k
12
votes
Accepted
Kanban - Move card from In Progress state to Backlog (moving cards backwards)
The main ideas with Kanban is to visualize your work and to limit work in progress. This allows you to maximize flow while at the same time see where you have bottlenecks.
If you started work on ...
- 15.5k
10
votes
Accepted
What techniques can identify missing requirements?
Software is never finished, merely abandoned.
Don't remember who said this first, but it's true. After you spend some time in the industry, you inevitably reach the same conclusion. And based on this, ...
- 15.5k
9
votes
Should I assign user stories per team or per team member?
You are seeing the real velocity. Stories that aren't done don't count. If people keep working on new stories while old stories aren't moved to done yet, that means your team isn't working like a team ...
- 1,299
9
votes
Should I leave building the database for the end?
US3 and US4 seem to be the same thing to me. If you need to display the last 5 messages, then that means saving them somewhere, so US3 should somehow deal with that. If US3 does, then US4 is redundant ...
- 15.5k
8
votes
Accepted
Making backlog items independent - how that can be achieved?
You cannot totally eliminate dependencies. Some story will depend on another, some feature will need another feature to be built first, some new feature will be desired only after you see and interact ...
- 15.5k
6
votes
T-Shirt Size and total estimation, how to manage them?
I assume the surveys will yield a score each macro area, say like from 1 to 9, 9 being very high interest. I'd attach an ordinal scale to your t-shirt size estimates, 1 through 5. To make things ...
- 37.2k
6
votes
Accepted
How to deal with Ready To Deploy in Sprint Backlog
I'm going to take it a step further than Hans-Martin Mosner did in his answer. Things that are outside the control of the team should not be part of the Definition of Done nor should they be on the ...
- 19.9k
6
votes
Is Backlog a list of items or a status of those items?
It's a good question. From a Scrum point of view the product backlog and the sprint backlog together encompass all the things that are being done or that are on the list to be done in future. So the ...
- 6,345
5
votes
Should I assign user stories per team or per team member?
I think what you're calling out is that you have a distribution of skills on the team that 66% of the team can do front-end work and 33% can do backend work. However, the work needs something like a ...
- 16.9k
5
votes
Accepted
T-Shirt Size and total estimation, how to manage them?
TL;DR
If you want to score things, you need to convert to a numerical or ordinal value to perform a comparison. However, part of the challenge is that you are using the wrong tool to compare features ...
- 50.7k
5
votes
Moving backlog items into Sprint
According to the Scrum Guide, the Sprint Planning event is when the Sprint Backlog and Sprint Goal are created and the entire Scrum Team (the Product Owner, Development Team, and Scrum Master) ...
- 19.9k
5
votes
Moving backlog items into Sprint
TL;DR
Anyone with sufficient permissions in JIRA can move the stories during Sprint Planning. It doesn't really matter who actually moves the stories. What matters is that the stories are pulled by ...
- 50.7k
5
votes
How can I resolve a huge backlog of over 1,000 man-days without blocking new change requests?
Increase Resources or Set Expectations Lower
I'm not sure what your actual question is, because from a project management perspective you have only three core sliders (also known as the "iron ...
- 50.7k
5
votes
How can I resolve a huge backlog of over 1,000 man-days without blocking new change requests?
Although I support what Todd wrote, there is more under the surface than above. So my answer based on my experience as a program director is as followe.
The "golden" triangle is a myth (yes its there ...
- 336
4
votes
Method for scoring backlog items in Jira based on impact to company goals versus level of effort
Looks very objective but counterproductive
While this approach looks super objective, I don't recommend it for the following reasons:
Sprint goal: Selection of stories for a Sprint should be driven ...
- 11.1k
4
votes
Should I leave building the database for the end?
There's no right or wrong answer if we just focus on effectiveness, as long as in the end we have the agreed solution built.
The DB isn't even required, one could use the File System writing the ...
- 2,084
4
votes
Accepted
Why single backlog for cross-functional teams is important?
The biggest advantage of having a single backlog is that it makes priorities clear.
If there are multiple backlogs then priority can be obscured. For example, is the second item on the Team X backlog ...
- 19.6k
4
votes
Accepted
Does the Kanban require teams to work vertically sliced user stories or can we use small technical tasks
User Stories are an Agile Practice, Independent of Kanban
"User stories" are an agile practice. They are not intrinsically part of Kanban. While many practitioners do use user stories as cards or ...
- 50.7k
4
votes
Backlog Grooming
In order to do Sprint Planning, you first need a Product Backlog. What you have is not sufficient to act as a Product Backlog.
The Scrum Guide defines a Product Backlog as "an ordered list of ...
- 19.9k
4
votes
Agile team (scrum) with a doubled backlog
I initially didn't want to answer this question since the comments do a proper job of capturing the gist of it (i.e. discuss it with your SM/colleagues), but since I don't like neither of the ...
- 15.5k
4
votes
Accepted
In Agile methodologies, what happens when team completes a backlog item or user story?
TL;DR: Once a story is completed, the team needs feedback on it. This can be done as stories are completed, or the team can receive feedback during the Review Meeting. The sooner, the better.
During ...
- 15.5k
4
votes
How should I deal with common dependencies when estimating stories in Scrum?
(Too large for a comment)
I disagree with two of your remarks under point 1:
"The infra itself has no customer value." So, get rid of the rigid requirement that "These stories are ...
- 611
3
votes
Should I assign user stories per team or per team member?
First, Scrum is a 'pull system'. In Sprint Planning, a self-organizing Scrum Team pulls items from the Product Backlog into the Sprint Backlog and formulate a Sprint Goal. There is no 'tasks ...
- 731
3
votes
Accepted
Single backlog. Multiple teams. How to handle Backlog Refinement?
I can see why the devs have balked, as the current approach doesn't sound constructive.
I also don't see an issue with their request as they are basically asking to refine the stories with the right ...
- 152
3
votes
User Story(ies) for multi-step user sign-up
First off, I'd like to point out that I think you're going at the wrong angle with that story.
Have you ever wanted to sign up for anything? Wouldn't it be better to just be able to use the thing, ...
- 14.8k
3
votes
Should I word backlog items as what's broken or what work needs to be done?
Bottomline: go for the approach that'll help you solve the end user needs (features or bugfixes) faster.
A task should reflect the issue from end users view. You can do a triage, but I'd avoid ...
- 8,673
3
votes
Accepted
Issues with multiple unrelated projects on the same kanban backlog
It is not quite clear whether you have a multi-tasking or context switching challenge or not. Since, as a team, you are supporting 8 different streams of work (6 services and 2 projects), you are ...
- 2,145
3
votes
Making backlog items independent - how that can be achieved?
Iterative and Incremental Work Can Have Prerequisites
In the typical agile development model, stories build on one another. In this case, "independent" doesn't mean it has no relationship whatsoever ...
- 50.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible