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TL; DR
Your question embeds some false assumptions about the linear nature of testing within an agile process. A mature agile team with cross-functional skill sets treats development and testing as intertwined activities rather than as sequential ones.
You should strive to integrate development and testing so that they are not fundamentally separate work ...
15
My question is, to what extent should the PO describe the requirements of a UI?
To the extent that the designers know what to design and the programmers know what to program. In your example, "as a user I want to see a list of dates so I can..." seems to be a good user story. Who else would know what the purpose of that user interface is and what data the ...
13
The Project Management role grew from needs to coordinate in the traditional environments. If the title sticks around, the role still has to change. I've seen PMs take on higher level coordination, become a PO, become a SM or design a new role altogether. This is all depending on your organization, quality of agile adoption and access to coaching. If not ...
12
Roles and Responsibilities for Team Composition
This is an interesting question, because it addresses some of the subtleties of self-organization with agile frameworks. In particular, it highlights the differences between authority and influence.
Scrum Team Members are responsible for identifying impediments (e.g. the team doesn't have sufficient expertise ...
12
Caveat at the start - these functional titles may be interpreted differently in different organations
Project Coordinator
responsible for the adminstration/bookkeeping of a project: preparing budget breakdowns, frequential reporting, supporting standard meetings and
Project Manager
responsible for planning, managing and steering the day-to-day activities ...
11
TL; DR
For the immediate future, you need to spend more time working with the Product Owner and less time focusing on the development team. You and the Product Owner both need to spend a couple of sprints refining your roles and learning to work together, and you both need to gain a better understanding of your respective roles in the Scrum process.
Fix ...
11
TL;DR
Slack is essential, but an excess of wasteful idleness is not. True leadership is being able to tell the difference.
Scrum Roles and Story Commitments
The Product Owner prioritizes the Product Backlog, but only the Development Team may estimate stories. The team uses these estimates, along with their estimated velocity, to determine how much work ...
9
Having done research (genetics, protein chemistry, proteomics and bioinformatics) and having been a project manager with a research team (pre-clinical research) I can tell you that, based on my experience, having a project manager - or at least awareness and implementation of project management best practices - is very helpful because:
It helps keep the ...
9
In the same way that a UX designer is responsible for creating an excellent user experience, a Scrum Master is responsible for creating an excellent project experience for those people who use the team to turn their ideas into reality.
By looking at the "team" from the external perspective, we can easily narrow down those bits of Scrum that are relevant ...
9
Project management is a profession; it represents a career path and a body of knowledge while still allowing for specialization. This is no different than a doctor specializing in geriatrics or pediatrics.
A project manager is a functional role within a project team that should ideally be filled by a project management professional. Other roles within a ...
9
Testing is Everyone's Job
Agile teams should strive to be cross-functional. Even when some members of the team specialize, everyone should be involved in some aspect of test execution or test development. For example, on a software project limited to the roles you've defined:
Designers should be involved in Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD), ...
9
I think the most useful advice can actually be found in the comment on your linked Question.
My manager was absolutely shocked to find out that we still had our stand up when he canceled it (a regular occurrence). My response to him was "The stand up isn't for you. It's for us. Whether you're here or not, we still need to sync up as a team.
The Daily ...
8
1) Accept the fact that the PO needs help and that the developers are the most qualified people to help.
The product owner and the developers together form a team. Nobody's time is more or less important than another. They work together to develop software. The team can't be expected to use their valuable time effectively if they don't have good stories, so ...
8
I am not deep into code testing but, from a QC perspective, having the same person check his/her own work is like having a prisoner keeping the key to his cell.
The QC objective is to find defects. The more defects found, the better the QC capability. That objective is inconsistent with the objective of the developer/builder, who is being measured by ...
8
TL;DR
Is the Scrum Master a "manager" in the traditional business sense of the term? No. However, the Scrum Master does in fact "manage" a number of things within the Scrum Framework.
Once you realize the original question is a definitional one, you are forced to accept that the vagaries of both the English language and the test-development process can ...
7
One of the best ways to avoid micro-managing is to first realize that by micro managing you are turning yourself into a human bottleneck. Nothing will happen without you, and your productive time will be sucked away doing things and solving problems for others which they should have learned to solve on their own a long while ago.
Once you realize this, the ...
7
tl;dr
Stop worrying that much about the amount of WIP and start worrying about getting the sprint done
At my job we've tried a lot of different things to keep the WIP at it's minimum. We're an extreme cross-functional team with members (8 in total) in six different areas (iOS, Android, .Net, Web, Testing and Design) and we're currently quite satisfied by ...
7
A manager who does the hiring, firing, performance reviews and has technical ability can still undermine the Team and force them to do things his/her way whether this person is the Scrum Master or not. For this person to take on the role of Scrum Master is just an additional burden on them.
The decision makers who chose to go the Scrum path hopefully know ...
7
TL;DR
If you're still thinking in terms of strongly-defined roles rather than cross-functional teams, then you're not making a successful transition to an agile process. Agile teams may need all of the skills you've listed, but each of those roles is actually the responsibility of the whole team rather than of individuals, and it is up to the team to ...
7
Firstly, you could use different methods/frameworks to run projects. Scrum wouldn't necessarily be the solution here as your prime concern is around the line in responsibilities between these two, both different and both required, roles. As well as getting the right level of communication set up.
I have grasped something from the tone of your question that ...
7
They could be doing a number of things. What they should be doing depends on your organization's Scrum/XP maturity but here are some common items:
QA work - yes devs can QA, whether thats writing new automated tests, upping existing test coverage or reducing test complexity, doing manual testing, or performance/load testing, devs can and should QA. The ...
7
TL;DR
You have one or more process problems involving communication and prioritization. You need additional information in order to inspect-and-adapt your team's process in a collaborative and sustainable way.
Your Problems, Restated
You make the following points in your original post:
I say they are small requests because they aren't critical issues ...
6
Represent the Stakeholders to the Agile Team
The primary role of a product owner is to represent the needs and desires of the stakeholder community to an agile delivery team:
Provides timely information and decisions on requirements and priority
Is an active participant in customer testing
Facilitates requirements gathering
Represent the Agile Team to the ...
6
Scrum is for Teams
While you could use Scrum in a one-person shop, Scrum is really a framework that's designed for teams rather than individuals. The underlying inspect-and-adapt philosophy is also available to a one-man shop using Kanban or Extreme Programming (XP); XP in particular is often a great fit when you want agile practices rather than a project ...
6
The PMI view is:
A Project Manager manages a project. They make sure they get done within constraints. He cares most about execution details in day-to-day work.
A Program Manager has a bunch of projects. they may be a Project Manager on one or some of those too.
A Portfolio Manager has a bunch of program. This is more of a strategic "where should our ...
6
The Project Management Perspective
Should the same person to do the testing that did the development, or should another team member to do the testing?
There is no canonical answer for this from a project management perspective because it's a false dichotomy. Quality assurance (QA) or user acceptance testing (UAT) often have different objectives and ...
6
Asking your Product Managers to also perform the Project Management role is probably not the wisest course. There is usually a tension between the two roles. And it is extremely difficult for a single individual to pull off both roles at the same time. Generally, if one person is trying to do both, one of the two sides will get less attention than it should. ...
6
The ratio depends on the company and how software and project management oriented the management team is.
In my experience, the majority of staff in an agile software team were testers, because the corporation focused on user experience and prior to delivering the final product to the customer, they needed to ensure that the product was "bug free" and that ...
6
A Scrum development team is self-organising and avoids the traditional hierarchical roles such as lead developer.
The idea is for team members to lead by setting an example and by gaining the respect of the other members of the team. For example, in the case where you have a very experienced develeper on the team they may often take technical leadership ...
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