25
votes
Accepted
Is it really necessary to have a four hour meeting in Sprint planning?
I'm going to slightly disagree with Bogdan's answer.
The Scrum Guide does say that:
Sprint Planning is time-boxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event ...
- 19.9k
19
votes
Accepted
Planning a sprint after reduced team strength
If you reduce a team from 7 to 4, especially if the reason is something outside the team, the best course of action is probably to treat this as a completely new team. People will need to change into ...
- 1,299
19
votes
Does the scrum master also estimate user stories?
If you do development work in the sprint, you should estimate. If you don't, then it's better you skip on providing your own story points estimates.
You can help your team with information and advice, ...
- 15.5k
19
votes
Should we take into account scope changes to the Sprint to measure the team efficiency?
Velocity is not a metric for team performance. It's a measurable dimension you can attach to the work being performed in the sprint so that the team can forecast future work in future sprints (see the ...
- 15.5k
18
votes
Accepted
What should we do if there are not enough PBIs to fill a final Sprint in Scrum?
In my team, if the backlog was exhausted, we always had the following to fall back on:
The team can invest time and create a prioritized backlog of technical / architectural debt in your systems
Work ...
- 384
15
votes
Accepted
How do I convince a team to follow the Scrum Guide?
Choose your battles carefully
You mention you are new to the team and new to the organization. It will take some time before the team fully trusts you and your judgement. If that has already happened ...
- 15.5k
13
votes
How can you estimate a spike story?
Two things jump out at me.
First, the end result of a Spike is not a shippable product. Spikes are used to learn, and do research. The end result is an answer to a question or finding some ...
- 19.9k
13
votes
Accepted
How to convert (volume of work, risk, complexity, uncertainty) to story points?
in your practice, do you use the aforementioned disaggregation? Why or why not?
I encourage teams to focus on estimating consistency rather than on having a complicated estimating approach.
There are ...
- 19.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Should all team members be assigned user stories?
Question: Do you give each team member a user story
A see an anti-pattern here. As a Scrum Master, you don't have to assign stories & tasks to team members. It's their job (under your servant ...
- 3,217
11
votes
Should we take into account scope changes to the Sprint to measure the team efficiency?
TL;DR
Your management team needs to be educated on how Scrum works, and to modify its key performance indicators to be outcome-based rather than effort-based. Its current approach to metrics is not ...
- 50.7k
10
votes
Selecting user stories during sprint planning
I really liked Todd's explanantion on how to deal with such situations:
Focus on Sprint Goal, instead of specific Stories.
When prioritising these stories, some will fit better to a concept of a ...
- 8,673
10
votes
Why is it important to only have PBIs completable in a single Sprint?
I want to supply a bit of a purist answer not because it is necessarily more "correct" than some of the others, but to give a different perspective. In many modern implementations of Scrum, ...
- 16.9k
10
votes
How to convert (volume of work, risk, complexity, uncertainty) to story points?
Relative estimates (points) are useful because they tend to give a better approximation than absolute estimates and tend to be easier to work with. Points are just an approximation however, and they ...
- 6,345
9
votes
Is it really necessary to have a four hour meeting in Sprint planning?
The Scrum Guide mentions that:
Sprint Planning is time-boxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter.
If you keep the same train of ...
- 15.5k
8
votes
Accepted
Story Points flaw?
The official answer to the problem is:
There is no fixed numbers. If it makes more sense to have a big story be 100 points, go for it. If it makes more sense to have stories that are 1/2 point, use ...
- 8,790
8
votes
Does the scrum master also estimate user stories?
The Scrum Guide says that the Development Team are responsible for all estimates. Where the SM isn't also a member of the dev team then it should be up to the team to what extent the SM participates. ...
- 6,345
7
votes
Reducing Spill Overs
Those "phases" you describe sound very non-agile to me, but there are instances where a single person cannot complete a story and needs help from another team member even in super-agile environments, ...
- 8,790
7
votes
Accepted
Selecting user stories during sprint planning
This is a really good question, but there is no definitive answer.
Have the conversation with your Product Owner. Explain to them the situation and offer them a choice.
The Product Owner may say ...
- 19.6k
7
votes
Accepted
Hot swapping stories
For the official answer, I'd take a read in the Scrum Guide under The Sprint, including Cancelling the Sprint. (https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint)
Scrum does allow for ...
- 16.9k
7
votes
Accepted
How to handle when planned work is blocked and a developer has capacity to take on a new user story that may be too big
Welcome to PMSE!
Good question. It may be a duplicate but I could not find it so I will answer. I can tell you how I coach teams to handle it.
Unfortunately, the story is bigger than the ...
- 4,095
7
votes
How can you estimate a spike story?
Spikes are typically time-boxed, so it is usually easy to work out the impact they will have on a sprint.
For example, you might time-box a spike on a new technology to be one developer for one day.
...
- 19.6k
7
votes
Accepted
Scrum - Add Placeholder for Future Story
Your Product Owner should be available during planning to answer any questions that appear concerning the stories. If question could not be resolved, because the Product Owner was not there or could ...
- 8,790
7
votes
If a team works on different things, how can they run sprint planning effectively?
With a team of four working on several different products you could consider using a Kanban-based approach instead of Scrum. Scrum works best if you have a cross-functional team with a quantity of ...
- 6,345
7
votes
How to convert (volume of work, risk, complexity, uncertainty) to story points?
Actually "story points" is exactly for not doing what you are trying to do :) The idea behind it is this;
Estimations aren't accurate. Here's an article of mine about this.
Trying to ...
- 580
6
votes
Architecture task as sprint issues
This is not the purview of the Product Owner (PO).
The PO should not care how the product is built - that concern lies with the Development Team. The PO should only care about what is built in what ...
- 14.8k
6
votes
Slicing User Stories
The short version is that it is the development team's decision. Let's say you have this story:
As a user with a telephone program installed, I want to automatically
dial a number when I client ...
- 16.9k
6
votes
How to convert (volume of work, risk, complexity, uncertainty) to story points?
I don't think there's a mathematical function to take in effort, risk, complexity, and uncertainty in order to return a single value in story points. I also don't think that approach makes sense.
One ...
- 19.9k
6
votes
How to integrate DevOps people into a Scrum Team?
There's no such thing as "DevOps people".
DevOps is an organizational culture. Like how Agile brought the business and developers into a close, collaborative relationship, DevOps is about a ...
- 19.9k
5
votes
How can you estimate a spike story?
Not every story in a sprint needs to result in a (potentially) shippable product. But as a sprint typically contains multiple stories, it should still be possible to have a (potentially) shippable ...
- 2,805
5
votes
Accepted
Sprints Starting Mid-Week in Scrum
Also, how do week-long Sprints with mid-week starts and stops follow each other without constantly moving which days of the week are used? For instance:
Sprint 1: Tuesday to Tuesday, next sprint ...
- 3,659
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible