28
votes
Accepted
QA is at capacity, Development has room
It seems to me that you are trying to fill each sprint to capacity, and keep everyone fully utilized. Planning for 100% resource utilization is a bad idea. You will only end up with busy people and ...
- 15k
17
votes
Accepted
Points, Hours, Capacity
EDIT:
First off, you have a bigger problem.
The team that I've taken over doesn't currently do retrospectives or sprint reviews sadly.
You may have tagged the Question as scrum, but you're not doing ...
- 14.8k
17
votes
QA is at capacity, Development has room
One possible approach you could consider is using the surplus developer time to create automated regression tests.
In the long-run this will give you better automated test coverage and will reduce ...
- 19.5k
15
votes
Scrum and interruptions (urgent bugs, requests)
Does Scrum take into account interruptions?
Scrum does not. The Scrum team does.
Scrum teams are self-organized and plan their own work. If part of that work consists of fixing urgent bugs from ...
- 15k
13
votes
How should we hand-off and ticket UI designs to the devs to ensure the developed design matches the provided UI mockups, while still being agile?
I've seen this happen with design so many times. It's a structural problem with how people and teams are organized. Now, I feel like I should say that cross-functional teams are not required to be ...
- 16.9k
12
votes
How to make Release Planning more accurate?
Not surprisingly, I hear that question a lot. The basic problem with the question is that Agile disagrees with the fundamental idea of a fixed-scope/fixed-timeline project. In the question you were ...
- 16.9k
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
11
votes
What to do with work that seems too small to bother planning?
Tasks that are not listed increase context switching. People have to keep them in mind, but they forget. Then they remember about them in the middle of another task and think to themselves "Oops, I ...
- 1,046
11
votes
How should we hand-off and ticket UI designs to the devs to ensure the developed design matches the provided UI mockups, while still being agile?
Let me challenge the frame of your question a bit:
Why do you have such specific requirements that change for every ticket?
Is it really necessary to have different margins between buttons on ...
- 8,436
11
votes
How can I foster more T-shaping within a Scrum team?
Well, first, "t-shaping" is just abstract theory. It's not a goal that one can grasp. It's not something to achieve. It does not produce anything, earn anything or make anything better. So ...
- 8,436
10
votes
Accepted
Is a good Scrum practice to meassure the developer team by the story points completed at the end of the sprint?
TL;DR
Scrum is not intrinsically about doing more work faster, although high-performing teams often do. Like most agile frameworks, Scrum is about doing just enough of the right work.
Measuring the ...
- 50.1k
9
votes
Points, Hours, Capacity
Points
Story points are a way of measuring effort using relative sizing. They are deliberately not time based for several reasons including:
People are naturally better at relative estimating than ...
- 19.5k
9
votes
Accepted
Is there planning in Scrum?
TL;DR
Scrum is an empirical control process, and therefore "big, upfront planning" is intrinsically an anti-pattern. But Scrum certainly includes a lot of iterative and just-in-time planning,...
- 50.1k
9
votes
QA is at capacity, Development has room
In Scrum, you should not see the distinction between "developer" and "QA tester". As of November 2020, the Scrum Guide says:
Within a Scrum Team, there are no sub-teams or ...
- 19k
9
votes
Accepted
Who consumes estimates?
Estimates are a tool that supports planning. Anyone that needs to make decisions and build plans about the future can use estimates as a tool to make predictions and figure stuff out (without knowing ...
- 15k
8
votes
Accepted
How to schedule back and front-end developers based on story points?
If I've interpreted correctly, your Question is how to convert Story Point estimations for User Stories into time-estimations for each individual developer.
My answer?
Don't.
The only possible ...
- 14.8k
8
votes
Accepted
If Velocity should not be used for future estimations, what is it good for?
Sorry, but that is not what the article says at all. The purpose of measuring the past is predicting the future and no one in that threads claims different.
What is claimed though and I absolutely ...
- 8,436
8
votes
Accepted
Dev went on vacation leaving his work unfinished. How to manage this without informing the customer?
What should be my actions in this situation now? I cannot tell the
client that the development of the feature has stopped because the dev
went on vacation. This would be unprofessional.
Honesty ...
- 19k
8
votes
Should a two-week Sprint include the weekends?
If your Sprints start on Mondays, how can you have a Sprint start on January 15, 2022? That day is a Saturday. Similarly, if your Sprints end on Fridays, how can you have a Sprint end on January 24, ...
- 19k
7
votes
How do I define acceptance criteria for subjective outcomes?
Why Your "Story" Isn't Testable
As a small business owner
I want simple and easy instructions to follow for any recommendations to my website
so that I understand what it is I need to do and ...
- 50.1k
7
votes
Accepted
How to set story points when two people work on the same item together?
First, it's important to realize that Velocity is not on a per-person basis, but a measure of the team's capability to deliver work in a Sprint. Every Sprint, your team completes so many Story Points. ...
- 19k
7
votes
How should a non-technical person define tasks for technicians?
Stories should always be defined in business terms. Why does there need to be web integration? Who is it for? What exactly does it need to accomplish?
If it is not directly-related to a business ...
- 14.8k
7
votes
Accepted
Is there Scrum ceremony for planning Technical Details on an Agile Project?
TL;DR: Scrum doesn't provide for a lot of things, you need to figure out a way that works for your team and project.
During the planning meeting (from the Scrum guide)
The Development Team usually ...
- 5,543
7
votes
Scrum - What and when is the best process to task a user story card in this environment
I am assigned to an Epic expected to take 3 developers for 6 weeks.
There are so very many things wrong with that statement, from a Scrum perspective. I'll go through them in order.
I am assigned ...
- 14.8k
7
votes
Change of business focus after a sprint has started
The product owner should decide when the objective of the sprint becomes obsolete and hence cancel the sprint.
If this is a recurrent situation, there's a need to diagnose why it is happening.
Details ...
- 1,113
7
votes
Accepted
What should a scrum team do if they complete work earlier than expected?
Great question, and a great problem to have :)
If a team is ahead of schedule, it's still ultimately up to them as to how to manage their work. I suggest asking them what their stretch goal should be ...
- 940
7
votes
Accepted
How far should you vertically slice?
You are gonna need it, but not immediately
So the point of vertical slicing is to take something like the database and say precisely, “I do not need the whole database right now.” So let’s validate ...
- 656
7
votes
Scrum and interruptions (urgent bugs, requests)
TL;DR
The Scrum framework certainly addresses capacity planning and scheduling, although it's not prescriptive about how the Scrum Team should manage the issues you describe. The implementation ...
- 50.1k
6
votes
Create a "plan on a page" for an Agile project?
This is one of the difficulties with running an agile project in an organization where management is not yet completely comfortable with it.
Remember the sacred triangle (Resources, Time and Results/...
- 161
6
votes
Accepted
How should a non-technical person define tasks for technicians?
TL;DR
You should not be defining tasks for technical people. Instead, you should describe a value proposition and some testable acceptance criteria, and then turn your technical experts loose to find ...
- 50.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible