Comments on: Why our current Sprint commitment will fail.

By: Rayk

Rayk — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:32:34 +0000

I thought about the issue after posting my comment. I think that it is possible to put a real user story behind, even if it is a more or less genric one: “Save me 50% money”. The idea could be to “change” the existing soulution (by refactoring or parallel processing or sth. else). So, one may have acceptance criteria (money saved, or will be saved next year) and the team has a goal and could derive tasks from it. IMO there is no need to refactor only because IT people would like to.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:03:40 +0000

@Rayk We had once a refactoring sprint/task. We told the PO what and why we need to do things and how long we think it will take. The story which came out was something like: Do the XYZ refactoring (if I remember things correctly).

By: Rayk

Rayk — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:14:06 +0000

Erm, not able, we are not able to develop agile. Sorry!

By: Rayk

Rayk — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:13:21 +0000

@Olli: No clue. In SAP BW we are (currently) able to do any kind of agile development, like buidl stuff or automated testing. So I (in my role as Product Owner) would try to detect such things in the planing game (right term? not sure). Tasks for the high priority stories, and additional task for general design with high priority, even if not directly related to a user story.

Currently we need to optimize a complex data model but keep existing reporting up an running. Additional we are bound to volume issues of the database (not another Terrabyte allowed). I’m wondering how to do this, and proper sprints might not be possible under this circumstances, but … Not sure, I think I would set up a well stuffed design “story” and detailed tasks on it. IMHO

PS: My avatar comes through wordpress blog. Follow the link …

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:25:01 +0000

Yes, I guess we need to make sure that we do not have a stories where we know a much more detailed breakdown and/or design is needed. Theses things need to be addressed asap (read: not in the 3rd week).

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By: strug

strug — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:09:07 +0000

by the way, how is it possible to set the avatar?

By: strug

strug — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:05:13 +0000

I’m a peer of Olli. I think we missed to address this epic early enough. Even if the priority is lower than other stories, it might be a good idea to invest the design session to get a better understanding of what needs to be done. After that, the task breakdown might be more valuable.

What do you think about defining all tasks of all committed stories in the first sprint week (we have 4 weeks iterations)

By: Oliver

Oliver — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:21:48 +0000

Our Scrum Master was unavailable for a couple of days due to some other plannings/reviews. Sure it is the architecture but how do you solve those kind of problems? We needed to do this refactoring. It was not the case that others had nothing to do, just not sprint related, the epic itself was the last task.

By: Rayk

Rayk — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:05:36 +0000

What said the ScrumMaster about that? I’m not programming expert but for me it seems that the issue is in the architecture and not in the management way. How come that one team waits for another? Interface issues? We facing same stuff while waiting for tables (simplify SAP BW terminology) to be created / loaded, but there is always sth. else to do.