19
votes
Accepted
Should a Scrum team formally track daily commitments?
Coordination/Collaboration, Not Formal Task-Tracking
While the Scrum Guide used to refer to the stand-up as a commitment meeting, it currently says:
The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event ...
- 49.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Should bug/regression tickets be reopened, or new tickets created?
TL;DR
You have an X/Y problem created by skipping over analysis of the process problem in favor of a tools-based approach. JIRA and GitHub Issues are tools, not processes, so until you fully define ...
- 49.8k
9
votes
Are there best practices with time tracking?
Are there any best practices for this?
Personally, I know of only three:
Figuring out what exactly you want to measure.
Accepting a certain degree of measurement error.
Trust
You say that your ...
- 14.9k
8
votes
Accepted
Who pays when actuals exceed pessimistic estimates?
Management Owns Cost-Overruns
A Developer estimates between 70 to 100 hours for a task. Due to the urgency of the task and the developer's unavailability, a far less experienced developer is ...
- 49.8k
8
votes
Should a Scrum team formally track daily commitments?
Tracking the daily commitments each team member sounds like micro-management at its best.
The exception would be for a very short project, or for a tiger-team trying to solve an emergency.
When you ...
- 4,552
8
votes
How to manage very small, easy tasks in Agile?
TL;DR
Even when the change is apparently minor, it can have ramifications. The "one-minute fix" to some CSS class might impact the user interface (UI) on some other page the developer isn't thinking ...
- 49.8k
7
votes
Jira story points versus sub task estimation
+1000 on Daniel's post: Do not use task hours at all.
Hour estimating is something you'll find a lot of the leading agile experts recommend. And then look that the time stamps. I'm not aware of any ...
- 12.5k
7
votes
How to manage very small, easy tasks in Agile?
Stuff like that should be in the working agreement of the team. There is no right answer on how to handle the situation but there are pros/cons of creating the story/defect and/or underlying task.
...
- 3,932
7
votes
Are there best practices with time tracking?
What are the best practices for tracking time for developers?
Don't do it, unless you can explain why you need it and what you do with the results.
Negative example:
Our company has recently ...
- 8,428
6
votes
Should a Scrum team formally track daily commitments?
From the process point of view there is nothing wrong with it, because this is the closest thing you have for tracking. However, it may harm the team members on the personal level, and can easily lead ...
- 11.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Jira story points versus sub task estimation
The reason Scrum teams often use story points for estimating is that it provides an effective way to calculate the capacity of a team. They also allow for lightweight forecasting when doing release ...
- 19.4k
6
votes
Using A.I. and neural activity monitoring on workers? I am using it on my team. Why is it bad?
Even If It's Not Trolling, It's a Recipe for Creating Disastrous Outcomes
This is (at best) tangentially on topic as a project management question, and may possibly be trolling. Even assuming good ...
- 49.8k
5
votes
Jira story points versus sub task estimation
Just do story points! If you already gained information about your velocity you don't need to estimate hours additionally. Usually we estimate only the complexity of the story and in the planning the ...
- 71
5
votes
Accepted
Handle the same project over multiple platforms in Agile
TL; DR
You do not necessarily have the same "project" across multiple platforms. You must identify whether you are producing different (but similar) products that form multiple projects, or a single ...
- 49.8k
5
votes
What KPI's or OKR's do you use for individual software engineers?
TL; DR- Tie individual KPIs/OKRs to developmental goals unrelated to the product/project they are working on.
My advice is based on a successful implementation one of my own agile mentors did and I ...
- 12.5k
5
votes
How to track Incomplete acceptance criteria in JIRA
As you are referring to sprints and user stories, I will assume you are using the Scrum framework.
Within Scrum, there is no such thing as a partially complete user story. A user story can either be ...
- 2,760
4
votes
How to manage very small, easy tasks in Agile?
Most teams I've worked with create a card and give them a size of 0, mostly for reference/logging purposes.
- 957
4
votes
Who pays when actuals exceed pessimistic estimates?
There is a difference between an estimate and planning value. An estimate is a probabilistic range and should include variables such as less qualified resources doing the work plus about 1,000 other ...
- 37.1k
4
votes
Accepted
Tracking hours for Managers/Scrum Master
Analysis
HR is going to use the breakdown. Mostly it would be an audit of the time spent and some insights into areas where people are spending time.
This is a known anti-pattern. If the team is ...
- 49.8k
4
votes
Recording workers PCs and insight into their activity and effectiveness? How
This type of micromanagement will chill motivation. There are a lot of studies and insight into that with a bit of research. So while you may "find" an issue if you did this type of ...
- 37.1k
3
votes
How to Plan a Project with a Fixed Management Deadline?
Planning values are always fixed. No one in their right mind will commission a project with an open checkbook and timeline. Planning values are typically aggressive and optimistic, as they should be,...
- 37.1k
3
votes
How to track milestones shared between several repositories?
Limited Native Options; Flexible API
Full-fledged, multi-project and multi-repository project management is not really what GitHub does best. You may want to explore third-party solutions for your ...
- 49.8k
3
votes
Accepted
How to track Incomplete acceptance criteria in JIRA
Usually, we clone the user story and move it to the next sprint for tracking.
Don't do that.
The story isn't done. If you put it to Done and clone it, your velocity will be messed up. It will look ...
- 14.8k
3
votes
Are there best practices with time tracking?
How do I do this in a way that doesn't punish people for being human
at work?
Tracking time implies a lack of trust. This may be more acceptable in some areas than others. Considering the intrinsic ...
- 8,614
3
votes
How should we capture "non-implementation" work?
There are typically two ways to use velocity with sprints:
Measure the team's capacity to do work - include all the work the team is doing in your calculations
Measure the team's capacity to deliver ...
- 19.4k
2
votes
Should a Scrum team formally track daily commitments?
I'm doing commitments in my daily standups. I track them only informally. I don't know whether others track them, but I do use the sentence "I commit to finishing X".
I got tired of listening (and ...
- 121
2
votes
Dynamically queueing tasks to better plan ahead
You might want to investigate/try a personal kanban board. It would require "sizing" the tasks (estimating relative to each other) or breaking them down into a common size, but after using it for a ...
- 957
2
votes
Does the act of measuring progress also slow progress?
This is kind of a trick question. I agree with @CodeGnome that PM controls is a non zero task. It requires the project to stop or slow down turning wrenches in order to participate in the control ...
- 37.1k
2
votes
How to Plan a Project with a Fixed Management Deadline?
Sure; the example you give, while not ideal (particularly the part where the timeline is decided by management, rather than the team), is not impossible to work in. Nor is it that uncommon, ...
- 14.8k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible