Implementation - Sprinting

Question 1

What is Sprinting?

Answer 1

Sprinting is part of the agile development method

The Process:
1) After User Stories are generated (Product Backlog of Requirements) , some of these are selected to be completed during sprint-> Sprint Planning
2) Sprint backlog (which is a subset of product backlog)
3) Daily Scrum Meetings -> Development for 2 Weeks (Sprint)
4) Sprint Review with Product Owners/Stake holders
5) Repeat process

Question 2

What are the Agile values?

Answer 2

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Question 3

What is a product backlog?

Answer 3

The product backlog is a list of what is needed in the software product. All features

Once you have a product backlog:
1) Determine how long an item will take to complete/implement – Determine the “size” of the item

2) Rank the importance of the items in the backlog – Already done as part of ranking the requirements

This is a very rough conversion scale. It is good enough to start a conversation. After several sprints, you get an idea of what a story point equates to in terms of time.

Question 4

What are Story Points?

Answer 4

Story points are units of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work

This is different from traditional estimates in a time format; I.e. days, weeks, months etc.

Question 5

What is T-Shirt Sizing?

Answer 5

T-Shirt sizing is a relative scaling process: Judge how long a task will take based on categorizing as: S,M,L,XL, XXL…

Question 6

How can Poker help with estimating tasks?

Answer 6

For a particular task: Members in the game make estimates related to the task by playing a numbered card face-down to the table

The cards are then revealed, and the estimates are then discussed.

Figures are hidden to avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring (the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates

The cards have numbers on them (Fibonacci sequence)
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144

Question 7

In Agile Development, who is responsible for product quality and timely delivery

Answer 7

The Engineering Team

Question 8

In Agile Development, who is accountable for the success of the product features in the market?

Answer 8

The Product Owner

Question 9

how does the product owner decide priority in the backlog?

Answer 9

Firstly, If you let one customer dictate priority, you are not destined for long term commercial success.

There are several methodologies you can use with a set of customers/stakeholders:

Likert Scale rating of features:
Very Important
Important
Neither Important or Unimportant
Unimportant
Irrelevant

Pairwise comparison of features:
Force ranking a list by expressing preference in each pair

MoSCoW

Question 10

What does MoSCoW stand for?

Answer 10

Must have
Should have
Could have
Won’t have

Question 11

What is the sprint backlog?

Answer 11

The sprint backlog is what the scrum team commits to getting done in the current sprint

Question 12

What happens during a sprint planning?

Answer 12

At a sprint planning meeting at the start of the sprint cycle you will generally take the highest priority items from the product backlog and move those into the sprint backlog until you have consumed the expected velocity of the team

The team will generally turn features into user stories. User stories force good structure and testability into the requirement with minimum detail.

Sprint velocity is generally measured into story points

Select the stories you want to work on in the sprint

Assign a person to work on the story to develop the feature in the program

Use your work management software (e.g. Trello for the product backlog)

Question 13

How to establish Velocity for Your Team?

Answer 13

A team’s velocity is equal to the amount of work that a team can complete in one sprint

If you’re trying to determine the velocity for a newly established team, track your team’s deliverables and story points from sprint to sprint to gauge how much can be expected from your sprint team

Question 14

What is a Scrum Burndown Chart?

Answer 14

A Burndown chart is a graphic representation of how quickly the team is working through the user stories

The burndown chart shows the total effort against the amount of work for each iteration

Often Y axis is story points

Product Management Software (for agile development) can produce burn-down charts for you – the team enters in what has been completed each day.

Question 15

How to go about examining team availablity?

Answer 15

Before fully committing to a sprint schedule, make sure to address your team’s capacity to complete proposed workload.

Ask team members to confirm any planned vacation time, commitments to other projects, and other possible time restraints

If team members can’t fully commit to the sprint workload, adjust the workload accordingly.

Question 16

What to do before a sprint begins?

Answer 16

Any known issues or setbacks should be factored into agile sprint planning

And addressed with the team before the sprint begins.

Question 17

What does the scrum master do?

Answer 17

The Scrum master should take care of who, what, when, and where of the sprint planning meeting.

This preparation includes deciding on the meeting’s date and time, as well as its attendees.

Trello has a sprint board.

Question 18

In sprinting, how do we deal with Bugs?

Answer 18

Bugs are where software is not working according to specification.

Everything you fix introduces the risk that you destabilize something else

Plan capacity for bug fixes from prior releases in upcoming release plans

Option 1: Have two backlogs:
Development features
Bug Fixes

Option 2: Include within the sprint backlog
Put some placeholder “Tasks” in the sprint backlog

Question 19

How to Deal with requests for new features?

Answer 19

Stakeholders may request new features

The product owner is responsible for ordering the priority of the features, as well as enhancements and bugs, that are going into this release

The distinction between features and enhancements is generally one of scale.

Customers will always be requesting new capabilities in your products:

Some might be quite small: call these enhancements
Some might be quite big: call these features

Question 20

What happens during sprint planning?

Answer 20

Select the stories you want to work on in the sprint

Assign a person to work on the story to develop the feature in the program

Question 21

What is a Scrum meeting?

Answer 21

Scrum meetings (sometimes called standups) are a daily check-in from the Scrum team members to review the work since the last scrum and plan the work until the next scrum.

It is facilitated by a Scrum Master.

The scrum master should be very good at keeping the team productive, removing obstacles and distractions. The scrum master should be good at keeping proceedings within a time box

It is briefly minuted, just to ensure that follow ups are done and people don’t use the meeting for things that should be done elsewhere.

The scrum meeting is for the members of the scrum team.

Question 22

Who should attend a Scrum meeting?

Answer 22

Engineers
Quality Assurance
User interface Design
Scrum Master

Optional:
Product Owner

Question 23

What happens in a Scrum meeting?

Answer 23

Everybody speaks
Everybody listens

What I have done since last standup
What I plant to do before next standup?
Any obstacles that I am facing

If you are speaking for more than 2-3 minutes, something needs to be taken outside of the Scrum meeting.

Question 24

What is a Scrum board?

Answer 24

It is a customary to have the scrum meeting somewhere that you can see the Scrumboard.

The Scrumboard is a simply visual planning board showing what is in the backlog, work is currently being worked on and what is done.

Done means all tasks in the DOD (Definition of Done) are complete.

Given that there is a collective commitment to the sprint backlog, you should be able to see what is in work in progress so that you can help clear work in progress (WIP) rather than something new from the sprint backlog.

Split out new tasks according to the definition of done, until the sprint backlog item can safely be put in the done column.

It is much better to have something to demo at the end of the sprint to start to confirm sprint velocity. Ending the sprint with everything in WIP is zero velocity.

Question 25

What is a scrum meeting not?

Answer 25

It is not a status meeting.
It is not a management briefing.
It is not a review.
It is not a demo.
It is not an investigation.
It is not a teaching session.
It is not long.
It is not boring.
It is not dominated by any individual.
It does not last longer than necessary.

Question 26

How long should a Scrum meeting last?

Answer 26

15 minutes is normal
10 minutes is good
30 minutes means you do not understand how to run an agile team
30 minutes means you have an ineffective scrum master
30 minutes means that you are inviting inappropriate people to a scrum meeting
30 minutes means that you have some personality issues in the team
30 minutes means your development team must factor out some productive time to attend a meeting

Question 27

What can go wrong in a Scrum meeting?

Answer 27

People don’t arrive on time
People can’t say what they did
People don’t know what to pick up from the scrum board next
People try to resolve problems in the scrum meeting
The wrong people are at the scrum meeting, so you start giving status or explaining the features
A dominate personality wants to speak for too long
People lose focus on the purpose of the scrum
The scrum team expand to fill a vacuum of time
Too many people get invited to the scrum
The scrum team is too big
The people are nervous of each other and will not admit they are stuck
Follow ups are noted by not actioned