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I am a product owner and I am helping setup a themed sprint. To be clear, by themed I mean all the users stories are related or cluster around a common goal. I still have other stories that don't work well in the theme that I want to include. The problem is that when I fragment the vision of a sprint we don't work as well. Any suggestions?
The problem is that when I fragment the vision of a sprint we don't work as well. Any suggestions?
First of all, you and your Team yourself can answer this question, because only you and your Team have the most knowledge about your situation. I know you wish there was a Scrum Manual where you could refer to some page and get the answer but you have to be factual - Scrum's simple framework never suggests that you have themed Sprints. In fact it suggests that the PO prioritize the uncommitted Backlog list of user stories based on their value and ROI, irrespective of themes, as long as the stories follow the I.N.V.E.S.T Principle, and prioritized periodically. Not that there is something wrong with theming, but if it is not working for you or your Team then you have to adapt to something new, that works for you and the Team. Here are some basic suggestions from my side:
Taking a leaf out of another members post I can say that you and your Team, need an ingredient, which is called "Courage"
The SM of the Team, along with you, needs to have the Courage to use the "Inspect and Adapt" principle to find out why fragmenting is not working for the Team.
As long as the Product Backlog is "ready" before you go into Sprint Planning, The Team needs to have Courage to trust you, the PO, in prioritizing the work for them, irrespective of their own wish or desire or way of thinking.
If fragmented Sprints is what will bring most value, then you as the PO need to have the Courage to talk openly to the Team during the Retrospective about why fragmented Sprints is the way to go, and we need to make it work until you guys find an adapted way of working in that fashion.
Lastly Everyone i.e. The Team, the SM and you need to gather the facts and notes from the above discussions, and come to a common consensus and have the courage to try it until you achieve your goals.
Keep in mind, all this needs to be done within the simple Scrum Framework rules stated in the Scrum Guide.
If you have main vision of the sprint it doesn't mean that you can't include user story which is not part of that vision. User stories are included mainly by their business priority not by their theme. So if you have user story with higher priority than your themed stories you should include it. In my opinion, themed sprints make sence only if priorities reflect splitting user stories into themes.
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We are new to Scrum and part way through the first sprint we have realised that one of the team members (a developer) needs to do some investigation into how navigation should work (from a user perspective) in the application.
So at the end of this investigation we should have a proposal or prototype of how something should work. But it wont have been actually coded in the application.
So my question is, how should we deal with something like this in terms of the sprint planning. I don't really see it as being user story, but what is it, and how is it treated in Scrum? Does something need to be added to the planning board for the investigation?
Thanks
Paul.
Try to treat prototyping like any other requirement as much as possible. Think about what you want to achieve, create a user story, define one ore several tasks and estimate them during sprint planning. Think of the development team being the user in this case. Definitely have it on the planning board and track progress in daily Scrum meetings. If you have problems estimating the tasks, define them as "time-boxed", i.e. with the fixed time budget, to prevent "endless" work without results.
Although you got the solution Just wanted to add something here.
Such prototyping/researching works are termed as Spikes in the Agile world.
Here, the team dedicates some members into such spikes only so much as to understand the feasibility of the user story and be in a position to help the entire team estimate for the user story.
SCRUM is rather an organizational process than a development model, like prototype-driven development. It means that different X-driven-development models can be easily incorporated, like TDD or even prototype-driven (PDD).
To incorporate PDD in SCRUM, one can set several milestones that are prototype versions. SCRUM can be used normally considering each prototype as a whole new project. It is good for a complex prototype.
However, if creating a prototype is very easy, and a single person can do it in one or two sprints worth of time, so it might be useful to retain a prototype-specialist, that, much like the application-specialist, monitors the work of the rest of the team to check consistency with the ultimate goal. However, a prototype specialist can iteratively provide new prototypes, guiding the work of the rest of the team in a practical manner, differently from the application specialist.
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When and who undertakes the work to sufficiently gather answers so that we can start to write stories for an upcoming sprint. Is this work done continuously and in parallel to existing sprints by the product owner? I guess this then creates tasks for a sprint such as investigate x and y. What if the PO suddenly requires a developer to answer some of the questions by trying stuff out? I understand the idea of spiking and creating r & d tasks. I guess I want to avoid the main dev of a feature being delayed to a following sprint too often.
The team determines how much new story work it can do during a sprint. The amount of time they have to do that work is some percentage of the work day. Depending on the responsibilities of team members (customer support, bug fixes, emails, PTO, other duties) that amount varies from team to team. I like to see 10-15% of the work day dedicated to "planning" for the next sprint. That includes helping the PO research, writing stories, breaking up stories, design sessions, what-if scenarios, etc. I think the key is not to shoe-horn every one of these types of tasks into a sprint but rather to set the correct time allocation to doing the sprint work. Maybe something like 30 hours/wk is an average number.
So to directly answer your question; the planning work is done in parallel to the current sprint work.
We usually have one or two meetings to talk about future stories. Also, we reserve some overhead time in each sprint to check out things we need to know to start a story. The meetings help determining which stories will probably shop up in the next sprint, so we know which questions to get answers to during the reserved time in the current sprint.
For us, if it's a large project, we will have kickoff meetings to brainstorm the project. There is often a knowledge gap for PO's between what they want to do and what they don't know we can do that these meetings can fill.
When new stories are created, we try to assign story points to them at some point before the next planning meeting so the PO has time to prioritize the list before that meeting.
I'm not sure of the kind of situation you describe where a PO would "suddenly" need a dev to try stuff out. In that case, I would offer a spike in the next sprint. Generally using new technologies isn't something that happens every sprint so this should suffice. If not, perhaps the sprints are a bit too long for this purpose (a trade off to be considered at least) Another alternative would be to introduce an evergreen story for trying stuff out. I've seen teams have these kinds of stories for tech debt payback - you could off an either/or situation. Sometimes dev fixes tech debt, sometimes they try stuff out. And if you run out of tech debt somehow, you can always grab another regular story to put in its place.
We typically reserve a sprint or two after a big release for research and proof of concept stories. Doing research as part of the regular sprint seems like it would be problematic. You'd probably use that time to absorb mis-estimations for value-adding stories and end up never using it for actual research.
If a new story drops into the backlog that needs research and the PO runs it up to the top of your backlog then the team should include some research time into their actual estimate. I would only do that if I didn't have the luxury of a research/prototyping sprint ahead of time though since estimating research can be a bit nebulous.
Who: Product owner. Stories and Product backlog are his responsibilities. Product owners are generally experienced people; even if they are not technical they can certainly perceive implementation complexities at abstract level. Still, if a story has gray area PO must ask right people the right question. He can ask developers, testers, peers, clients and even scrum masters.
When: all the time.. Continuously. PO must not do anything but (1) provide (or get) answers for the team’s questions regarding scope and function, (2) and gather data that would refine the stories and their scope: thus proactively solving the queries of his team.
Bottom line is if product owner is not giving good stories to the team then he is not doing his job. Stories can be written by anyone but in the end it’s PO who ensure that Product Backlog is in order and that top priority stories are defined.
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So we start Scrum today and start going over story points estimates.
The first story that comes up is a new screen that needs to be developed. It has 1 sentence to describe the screen and 3 user acceptance tests.
This starts a fight between the development team and the product owner.
Product owner says that stories do not need to be speced out and they will just be fleshed out during the sprint.
We say that the story needs to be completely speced out for the sprint.
But now I am starting to be unsure about who is right....
Any good articles on this that I can send to the team about how defined a user story has to be?
What happened during sprint planning?
It appears that you did not review the sprint plan to see the stories in advance of starting the sprint.
That's okay.
Stories are fleshed out during the sprint. That's the point. Relax.
Flesh out the story quickly, build quickly.
At some point, the one sentence story may become rather complex. If that's the case, break it up into something you will finish during the sprint, and stuff you will not finish. It's okay to have some stuff that was not known and did not get built.
Relax.
Do not overspecify everything. Do not specify every nuance of the story before the sprint. Just build something that will work. As quickly as possible. That's why it's called a "sprint".
Don't build everything you imagine. Build enough that the story can be performed by the user.
The point is to build something that works on schedule. If you have to adjust the scope of the story, that's okay.
Any good articles on this that I can send to the team about how defined a user story has to be?
A story is typically made of one sentence based on the following template: In order to <benefits>, as a <role> I want <action> (and I like to add "how to demo" steps that help to understand the story and to build acceptance tests). The idea is to capture the essence, not the details. Details are captured using face to face conversation during the sprint (and may be added as high level notes to the story). But a user story is not a contract, it's a promise for a conversation (about the scenario for which the story is the title). If you need some guidelines, following the INVEST model has worked well for us.
PS: No offense but the development team seems to react very defensively (asking for full speced things sounds like "hey, we did it as it is written", i.e. CYA). A user story leaves some space for creativity. Isn't that nice? If you need more details, take your responsibilities, go gather them. And if for any reason you can't get required clarifications or details, raise an impediment and have your ScrumMaster work on it. Personally, I enjoy having some space for creativity.
IMHO fighting is not good - Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team form the Scrum Team so they need to work together. They want to achieve the same thing - building a great product.
To me the question is how important it is for the Product Owner how the end result looks like. If he says: "We hired the best people on the market, you're the experts, whatever you come up with is fine with me as long as the user need is fulfilled", then I'd fine with the PO statement. But of course he can not complain afterwards that he does not like the look or the colors!
Another point is that the team needs to be confident that they can commit to this story. Usually teams estimate story size with planing poker so if the development team can not estimate, you need to invest time before that you can estimate (e.g. talking about the story before, spiking and negotiate with the PO about the story). Sometimes the designer/UX guy needs to work ahead and create mockups for the upcoming user stories.
It's always about finding the balance between planning and doing :-)
fs
I believe Martin Fowler's blog post on Conversational Stories probably answers your question best. You really don't want to be in a situation where the Product Owner is required to spec out everything in detail. You've got a team of smart, creative people that are perfectly capable of making good implementation suggestions as well as asking the right questions as they come up during the sprint. You don't want to lose out on that creativity and input by locking down requirements up front.
The story should be clear enough that the team understands what the feature is and small enough that the team can complete it in one sprint before it is added to the sprint backlog. The rest of the details should be handled via conversations during the sprint.
In our practice we do internal investigation of tickets for the next spring before planing with stakeholders. We usually find a lot of questions to clarify. If we don't answers before sprint starts we can't estimate it. If we found new issues/question during sprint we inform stakeholders and usually such story will be transferred to the next ticket.
So, my answer will be: the story don't need to be completely speced out for the sprint. But team need to know all answer to questions required for implementation as well as business decisions.
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We've been using Scrum on a few projects now with varying success and I now have a query relating to documentation.
In Scrum, you obviously have the product backlog ("The application begins by bringing up the last document the user was working with.") and the sprint task backlog ("Implement forgot password screen"). However, in all the examples I have seen, these two items are fairly high level in terms of detail (being designed on fit on a post-it note).
So, where does the detail sit? Let's say the client has some very specific requirements for a stock management screen, or has a complex API that needs to be integrated with on the back end, where is this documented, how and who captures this information? Is it seperate to the backlog but populated on a just-in-time basis or some other way?
Sprint backlog
The sprint backlog is a greatly
detailed document containing
information about how the team is
going to implement the requirements
for the upcoming sprint. Tasks are
broken down into hours with no task
being more than 16 hours. If a task is
greater than 16 hours, it should be
broken down further. Tasks on the
sprint backlog are never assigned,
rather tasks are signed-up for by the
team members as they like.
Detail can sit in a wiki available to the whole team and editable by the whole team.
Not sure if this is as simple as it sounds. We've seen challenges with the detail part as well. Lets say if we're developing on a story that requires capturing simple contact information for lets say a CRM system. I now have the stories from the PO and we went through the sprint planning meeting and understood the first 5 stories that meets our velocity. However its always a struggle on capturing all the details of the conversation, for example how the screen needs to be laid out, what are the 20+ fields you need to have on the screen, can some of these fields lookup information from other tables/views etc.
Who captures those details, should it be the PO or developer and whats the best practice for storing these details. We're right now trying to use wiki's for this, however it becomes an overhead in trying to maintain the action items on who needs to update which details and by when.
My understanding is that specific requirements such as this are handled by the product owner. They will liase with the client during Sprint Planning 2 and update the tasks with specfic requirements as needed - hence why the Product Owner is a optional attendee of the Sprint Planning 2 meeting. This gives you a hybrid of Just-in-Time and Sprint Planning 2 population of the specifics. Anything that isn't satisfied by the time you come to work on the task will be an impediment and should be dealt with a the daily scrum, by the product owner.
As the development is Agile when using Scrum you shouldn't find too much of an issues getting requirements just in time.
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We are a small team of 3 developers (2 experienced but new to this particular business sector) developing a functionally complex product. We're using Scrum and have a demo at the end of each sprint. Its clear that the functional team have plenty of ideas but these are not well communicated to the development team and the demo poses more questions than answers.
Have you any recommendations for improving the the quality of input from the functional people?
Further info: I think part of the problem is that there are no specs or User Stories as such. Personally I think they need to be writing down some sort of requirements - what sort of things should they be writing down and to what complexity given its an agile process?
Have you tried working with your customer to define / formulate acceptance tests?
Using something like Fit to come up with these tests - would result in better specs as well as force the customer to think about what is really required. The icing on the cake is instant-doc-executable specs at the end of this process.
That is of course, if your customers are available and open to this approach. Give it a try!
If not (and that seems to be the majority - because it is less work) - calendar flash 'em - schedule meetings/telecons every week until they sing like canaries :) +1 to Dana
Sometimes the easiest way to get input from people is to force it out of them. My company used SCRUM on a project, and found very quickly that people tend to keep to themselves when they already know what they're doing. We ended up organizing weekly meetings where team members were required to display something that was learned during the week. It was forced, but it worked pretty well.
I'm a big believer in Use Cases, detailing the system behaviour in response to user actions. Collectively these can form a loose set of requirements, and in a SCRUM environment can help you prioritise the Use Cases which will form that particular sprint's implemented features.
For example, after talking to your functional team you identify 15 separate Use Cases. You prioritise the Use Cases, and decided to plan for 5 sprints. And the end of each sprint you go through and demo the product fulfilling the Use Cases implemented during the sprint, noting the feedback and amending the Use Cases.
I understand that the people you call functional people are acting as Product Owners, right?
I think part of the problem is that there are no specs or User Stories as such. Personally I think they need to be writing down some sort of requirements - what sort of things should they be writing down and to what complexity given its an agile process?
Actually, without having any specs you probably have no acceptance test for the backlog itens as well. You should ask the PO to write the user stories, I like the "As a - type of user -, I want -some goal- so that -some reason-." form. Keep in mind that the User Stories shall be INVEST - Independent, Negotiable, Valuable to users or customers, Estimable, Small and Testable. What is a must is to have the Acceptance tests written together with the story so that the team should know what the story must be able to do in order do be set as done.
Remember that as the product evolves, it's expected to the PO have ideas as he sees the working product. It's not a bad thing, actually it is one of the best thing you can get through Agile. What you have to pay attention is that this ideas mus be included in the product backlog and it needs to be prioritized by th PO. And, if it's necessary and will add value to the customer, the idea should be planned to be built in the next sprint.
Someone from the functional team should be part of the team and available to answer your questions about the features you're adding.
How can you estimate the Backlog item if they are not detailled enough ?
You could establissh a rule that Backlog item that do not have clear acceptance criteria cannot be planned.
If would be better to have someone from the functional team acting as Product Owner, to determine, choose and priotitize the Backlog items, and/or as Domain Expert.
Also, make sure everyone in both the functional team and the development team speaks the same language, so as to avoid misunderstandings ; See ubiquitous language.
Track the time most waiting for answers from the functional team as well as he time wasted developping unnecessary features or reworking existing features so that they fits the bill.
Are they participating in the stand-up meetings?
You could propose to have a representative at each (or some) of them, to ask them for input before the end of the sprint
Are you doing stand-up meetings and do you have burn down chart? I think those two areas would benefit you greatly.
I recommend the book "Practices of an agile developer" it is full of suggestions how to make a scrum team successful. It also gives good tips how to get the product owner/customer more involved and how to get the whole process rolling. It's worth the money IMHO.
I agree that you need some sort of requirements (user stories or else).
One piece of advice I can give is to use some sort of visual aids with the functional teams. When customers have plenty of ideas (as you've said) they usually also have a visual idea of what a feature looks like, when the developed product doesn't fit this visual idea it creates a lot of doubts, even if it does the job functionally.
When discussing functionality with customers, I try to be very visual. Drawing sketches on a board, or even verbally describing what something would look like. Trying to find a common visual image. You can then take a photo of the sketches and use them as part of the documentation.
Another advice is to keep your sprints as short as possible, so that you do more frequent demos. But you may already be doing this, since you didn't mention your current sprint duration.