DEV Community

Discussion on: Scrum Team Maturity

Collapse
 
nicolasini profile image
Nico S___

Thanks for writing this, is very thoughtful.

In my own experience with Scrum I've found that:

  • Sprint commitments should be treated as "forecasts", rather than hard commitments that we will get done no matter what. Scope flexibility is key to Agile.
  • There have always been a lot of handover of partially completed work across different team members. We need to work together as a team rather than skill silos.
  • Is really hard to fit all the Scrum activities (planning, retrospective, grooming, etc), do the product work (design, development, test), AND complete the actions that came from retrospective, all in the usual two weeks sprint.

I like how you hint into measuring customer value rather than story points as a way to measure the team's velocity. I think thats one key aspect that gets overworked. In worse case scenarios teams are asked to "fix" estimates to fit with deadlines, and similar stories. We should focus on delivery value, not process artefacts.

Collapse
 
ilonacodes profile image
Ilona Codes

Sprint commitments should be treated as "forecasts", rather than hard commitments that we will get done no matter what. Scope flexibility is key to Agile.

Completely agree! Commitment does not mean promise, and any development team cannot make this promise, because no one knows what unforeseen circumstances could unexpectedly happen.

Is really hard to fit all the Scrum activities (planning, retrospective, grooming, etc), do the product work (design, development, test), AND complete the actions that came from retrospective, all in the usual two weeks sprint.

Exactly! The whole point of Agile is "people over processes." So far, many startup companies have hired professional scrum masters; everything must be Agile religiously. And that takes lots of time for developers to follow all Agile processes, including pointless meetings instead of focus on their actual job.