24
votes
Accepted
How to deal with sprint planning running far too long?
You're right - 5 hours in Sprint Planning for a 1 week Sprint does seem like a long time. The Scrum Guide time-boxes Sprint Planning to 8 hours for 1 month Sprints and says that "for shorter Sprints, ...
- 84.2k
18
votes
Accepted
How to distribute development and bug fixes tasks
Your question sounds a bit like your "team" consists of this sole engineer? If yes, the main question is why they didn't run away yet. Such a situation isn't sustainable.
Apart from the &...
14
votes
How to distribute development and bug fixes tasks
First of all I agree with Hans-Martin Mosner's answer.
However, in your current situation there also might be an issue with the bug fixing process. Either all bugs are emergencies that directly affect ...
- 743
13
votes
How to distribute development and bug fixes tasks
It sounds like you are trapped in a loop of rushing the dev work, which then has bugs, which then causes you to rush the dev work.
Break the cycle by doing fewer, but better tested releases. Stop ...
- 79.8k
11
votes
Need help for sprint planning when tasks are not done in previous sprint
My first suggestion would be to fix your terminology to improve communication, both internally and externally. You are using terms like "Scrum Master", "Sprint", and "Sprint Review". These are terms ...
- 84.2k
10
votes
Should agile sprints/iterations be back-to-back?
whether the notion that sprints/iterations in agile development should always be back-to-back
Yes. A Sprint is timeboxed, and the next sprint starts right after the previous one's timebox ends. This ...
- 201
9
votes
Accepted
What time of day should we end a sprint before a sprint review meeting?
Scrum says nothing about this. You should hold the review as soon as practical after the sprint ends. That means after all the work is done, all tests have passed, and the team has had a chance to ...
- 25.4k
9
votes
Accepted
Should there be a gap between sprints?
There is no gap between sprints. After the Review and Retro, the next thing is the next sprint's planning. Now, what you describe doesn't sound like a gap as much as it is a 12-day sprint instead of a ...
- 2,041
9
votes
dev and qa in same sprint
How can both be completed by the end of the sprint and neither is remaining but still not have a dev sit idle near the end of the sprint while they wait for QA effort or QA starts some QA work after ...
- 25.4k
9
votes
How to avoid code review bottlenecks when some of the team pair program
The teams should be empowered to review their own code, after all there's no one better qualified.
GIT Pull Requests implement one of the easiest and most robust models for this:
Code cannot be ...
- 3,426
8
votes
Do "almost finished" tasks or stories justify planning with overload in the next sprint?
Do not try to make your velocity look better than it is. The way forward is to acknowledge that the task was not completed you overestimated what you could do in the sprint and failed. But that is ...
- 2,586
8
votes
Does the Scrum Guide Specify How Often to Release QA/Test Builds?
No it does not. Only thing it states that at end of sprint, Potentially Releasable Product Increment is produced.
And general consensus of "Potentially Releasable" is that it does include it being ...
- 37.8k
8
votes
How to distribute development and bug fixes tasks
You have apparently not considered option D: stop doing Scrum.
It sounds like your work is much more suited to something like Kanban rather than Scrum, so you should do that.
- 25.6k
7
votes
Accepted
Product Backlog vs. huge features
My personal perspective from having worked in agile for a few years, is that you really shouldn't fear a large backlog (to a point).
If you are writing self-contained user stories, each of which is ...
- 359
6
votes
How to deal with sprint planning running far too long?
I hear you. That's too long to spend! Hopefully, your team is discussing this in your retrospectives. We tried several experiments with mixed results:
Everyone does a high-level design on a single ...
6
votes
Accepted
Do "almost finished" tasks or stories justify planning with overload in the next sprint?
When a story isn't done at the end of the sprint, then the points of the story don't count towards the velocity of that sprint and the story goes back onto the backlog.
If during the planning of the ...
- 76.7k
5
votes
Is the Iteration Planning part of the Iteration itself?
In Scrum, as defined by the Scrum Guide, the Sprint includes "Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, the development work, the Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective". So the answer to your question from ...
- 84.2k
5
votes
Is the Iteration Planning part of the Iteration itself?
The Sprint is the container for all the work that is done in the sprint, this includes Planning, Sprint Review and Retrospective and all the work in between.
Nothing prevents you from adjusting the ...
- 1,044
5
votes
Accepted
Sprint planning: who decides which items of the Product backlog to be included into the Sprint backlog?
The product owner knows what is important, and prioritizes the backlog. The team knows what is possible, and can estimate backlog items. Together, they can create a sprint goal that is both relevant ...
- 135k
5
votes
Accepted
Agile scrum - estimate another team's sprint
This sounds like management outsourced their micro-management.
Even in a fully cross-functional team sprint planning is deeply personal. Not only because my skill set is personal but because my ...
- 115k
5
votes
In scrum, if tasks are estimated in hours, how to avoid assigning the task in sprint planning?
The statements that you claim should be true in Scrum aren't necessarily true in Scrum, according to the Scrum Guide.
It is not true, according to Scrum, that you should be estimating user stories in ...
- 84.2k
5
votes
As a developer, how should I work differently in kanban vs scrum?
The two approaches are very compatible. In fact, it is completely possible to use both. That said, as you adopt Scrum, there will probably be two significant differences.
1) Scrum is very team ...
- 2,041
5
votes
Should story points be re-estimated when rolling un-finished stories into next sprint?
I think if there is any lesson to take away from scrum and agile as a whole its "Don't waste time worrying about estimates not being right"
If you didn't finish the 5pt task in the last ...
- 79.8k
5
votes
How to distribute development and bug fixes tasks
One step is to set up everyone’s development environment so that bug fixes can be made without disturbing ongoing development. For example, I always have three folders that are checked out from git. ...
- 47.5k
4
votes
Accepted
Interrupting software development methodology
With only 3 devs you might find Kanban a better fit than scrum.
It will allow you to deal with the interrupts within the system without having to restart the sprint.
re testing, as long as you have ...
- 79.8k
4
votes
Should agile sprints/iterations be back-to-back?
A sprint is simply a collection of work (backlog items) to be done which provides some value to the product. It can be adding a new feature, it can be refactoring existing code to make it easier to ...
- 5,508
4
votes
dev and qa in same sprint
...But that still does not cover for at the least a little time when dev has completed developing vs QA has completed testing the deliverable...
The key to a sprint is that the team are collaborating ...
- 39.5k
4
votes
dev and qa in same sprint
Let me suggest a different approach than the ones mentioned already. When QA shall remain a separate team or department, you may consider to work this way:
We are currently completing a sprint items ...
- 214k
4
votes
Sprint planning: who decides which items of the Product backlog to be included into the Sprint backlog?
This is a bit confusing, but in the Scrum Guide, there are two key responsibilities split between the Dev Team and Product Owner:
1) Product Owner owns the priority in the backlog.
2) Only the team ...
- 2,041
4
votes
Accepted
Team focusing on tasks, but not on User Stories
I have good news for you: you do have a cross-functional team! The Scrum Guide defines a cross functional team as this:
Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the
work ...
- 2,041
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