Process adjustments
by germaine.oliver@ · 25 things on Twos
- Context: It seems that we've had some things fall through the cracks recently. In doing a process review with a couple of different people, it seems that there are some things we can adjust to avoid (or at least minimize) this circumstance in the future.
- Germaine's thoughts: Using the Agile construct more effectively will be useful.
- Also, bidirectional communication needs to happen, and devs need to raise questions rather than trying to guess what the PO is looking for.
- The elements of agile we should work a little harder on:
- User story must be more mature: User story and acceptance criteria typically need to be completed.
- Dev must understand context and intent of user story.
- Standups/Slack for clarification.
- If dev can't complete a user story in a sprint, the user story needs to be made into an epic and decomposed. That is a conversation between PO and dev.
- Things happen: if a user story goes into a second sprint, the dev must convey issues, and discussion of decomposing must occur.
- If it goes into a third sprint, now it's a harder conversation and decomposition MUST occur, and a process review to determine what caused such a significant variation.
- The PO and dev need to partner in having the user story clear and sprint-sized. That takes longer up front, but avoids SO MUCH rework, it is worth it.
- Things to discuss at Jan 9 meeting, previously called the standup, now planning meeting:
- will using the Agile methodology more effectively address known process issues better?
- Besides it taking more time in the planning meeting, what are concerns?
- Is there a better way to address the issues?
- How do we convey timelines/suspenses/urgency more effectively?
- How do we discuss quality vs speed?
- How do we document the quality issues brought on by not having infinite time?
- Let's revisit story sizing: does the value/understanding make it worth it? Or is it too much time for too little value?
- If it's worth it, what is the best way to size stories?
- Story points? Tshirt size? Animals?
- What is the best way to determine sizing?
- Assigned dev assigns size?
- Team effort, like planning poker?
- How do we integrate that into our process?