Category: Agile

Sumant – Developer 1, Veena – Scrum Master

Veena – Sumant, we are almost at last day of sprint and your 3 pointers are not yet done. Do you see a risk? What is the tentative time you think you would take?

Sumant – I can’t tell you. Agile says that you cannot convert story points to time hence 3 pointers can take 3 days or 3 months. All valid in agile.

Veena – Why do you estimate your stories?

Sumant  – So that we know whether we can do that in our sprint or not.

Veena – And a sprint duration can be 3 months too?

Sumant – Oops, I got it.  My bad!

Challenge – Story point is not about time, not even a range.

Ron – Developer 1, Amy – Scrum Master

Amy – How come we committed 45 story points and we accomplished 51 though I have not added any extra work to sprint.

Ron – The performance improvement story was little complicated hence I have added 6 additional points to it.

Amy – Once an estimate is done, it is not supposed to change in any case. If so, the whole point of estimation has no value.

Ron – Sorry, I will change that back to original and add the challenges encountered with that story to our process asset library.

Challenge – It is perfectly alright to play with estimation at any point in time.  

Paula – Customer, Amy – Manager

Paula – Amy, you mentioned that Agile is supposed to be faster. Why don’t you speed up the work with the same team? Sprint velocity is supposed to be must faster sprint after sprint and the speed of work should constantly increase.

Amy – Too much of speed can affect the quality of work. Agile promotes sustainable development. In a long run, the overall benefit with respect to quantity or quality is going to be more in most circumstances while the sprint can run with a pace and all you can expect is little improvement sprint after sprint.

Paula – OK. Got it.

Challenge – ‘Sprinting’ means running super-fast.

Ron – Manager, Amy – Scrum Master

Ron – Amy, why the heck stand-ups are going for an hour every day.

Amy – The team prefers to talk and sort out open items. Although there is some unwanted discussions as well but that is just to keep morale up. It is truly helping us to sort out open items every day.

Ron – There is something wrong here. Are the questions being asked or clarification expected common to all?

Amy – Not really. Once in a while, it is general but typically it’s between two people.  It helps everyone to get the perspective.

Ron – You really need to take those discussions offline. The standup is supposed to end in less than 10 minutes (Worst case 15 minutes) for 10 member team.  You can do planning or grooming once or twice a week but that must have to be separate meeting and not a standup.

Challenge – A standup cannot be a meeting.

Steve – Developer 1, Jeff – Developer 2

Steve (Evening) – Jeff, Can I pair with you on your story?

Jeff – Sure, but I am almost done with my story and moreover I would leave in another hour or so. If you are still interested, please join me.

Next day – Morning standup

Steve – I worked on adding comments field to our customer UI and further added that to database.

Jeff – I paired with Steve. Status – Ditto!!!

Message – I didn’t do anything hence pairing was a saver although it was knowledge transition.

Kent – Scrum Master, Chris – Sr. Developer

Kent – Why do you work less than half a day?

Chris – I finish all my sprint work, I don’t need to look at time!

Kent – (During Sprint Planning) – I think we can pick more work. Chris, you being a senior developer, what do you say?

Chris – This is all we have been completing consistently in the past. That’s all we can do in given time hence we should not add more points.

Challenge – I leave very early because I finish my work and I pick very less because this is all I can do.