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.
...
- 8,428
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 ...
- 19.4k
13
votes
Who truly prioritizes the product backlog? The Product Owner or Team?
Business Analyst works with the Product Owner and provides him with valuable insights on the value and importance of the user stories, but the PO is still the person who sets the priority of the ...
- 11.9k
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 ...
- 15k
11
votes
Accepted
Scrum backlog and sprint planning
the backlog is populated by the project manager
Scrum, as it's defined, doesn't have a role called "project manager". There are only three roles - Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developer....
- 19k
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, ...
- 15k
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 ...
- 15k
8
votes
Who truly prioritizes the product backlog? The Product Owner or Team?
The direct answer is that the Product Owner prioritizes the backlog. It is, of course a little more nuanced than that. In an ideal world, the PO would just sort the backlog items by effort and value ...
- 16.9k
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 ...
- 15k
7
votes
Accepted
PBI estimation during grooming session
There is no "right" way to conduct your backlog refinement meetings. In fact, you can change it up to get what you need at the time out of it. My goal in backlog refinement is to set the team up to ...
- 16.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Is backlog refinement (grooming) waste?
TL;DR:
I agree with you that, once you've got a grip on your backlog, that grooming is wasteful. Spending time breaking down requests that will never be implemented is waste and violates the spirit of ...
- 1,380
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 ...
- 37.1k
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 ...
- 19k
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 ...
- 6,206
5
votes
Can a single resource be in multiple teams for multiple projects?
There are a number of issues with this approach:
Multi-tasking reduces efficiency. Every time they have to context switch between projects they will lose effectiveness.
Scrum is based on the idea of ...
- 19.4k
5
votes
What is the best way to handle small items in a backlog?
Two main options here:
Give the PO help
Give the PO better tooling
The Product Backlog is:
an ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product and is the single source of ...
- 795
5
votes
Accepted
What is the best way to handle small items in a backlog?
The backlog consists of PBIs like Epics and User Stories. I really like using User Stories. That's why I'll stick on the term in the following. But be aware that other representations might be more ...
- 1,767
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 ...
- 49.8k
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
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) ...
- 19k
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 ...
- 49.8k
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 ...
- 49.8k
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
Where should I keep track of open items from previous sprints?
I think you have the right place. ie the backlog. But only if you are actually going to do them and they should be at the TOP!
If you aren't going to do them, I suggest a 'will not fix' or 'phase 2' ...
- 926
4
votes
Accepted
How to deal with reoccurring stories in agile?
Ask yourself a question, why are you creating tasks and user stories?
I can think of several possible reasons:
You want to know the capacity of the team for future sprints
You want to track who is ...
- 19.4k
4
votes
Who truly prioritizes the product backlog? The Product Owner or Team?
The answer is, Yes, No, It Depends, in true agile fashion. :)
So I've been lucky or unlucky as the case may be and have never worked in a company with the Business Analyst role. So I can't comment ...
- 12.5k
4
votes
What to do if a developer is waiting on a colleague to complete his side of the story during a sprint?
When a developer is blocked it can be tempting to bring work in to the sprint from the backlog.
Before you do this, consider the following:
Does the story coming in only require development effort? ...
- 19.4k
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
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 ...
- 162
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