Agile So Far – January 2015
Our 31st iteration started off with an Agile review meeting where we had an open discussion on what changes we’d like to make, ideas for the future and a few minutes from me on addressing reporting needs. Not a lot came out of it, surprisingly. I guess I was expecting more tweaks than I probably should, given that we’re three years into this and have been fairly stable for more than a year now. I’m not sure how typical that is with smaller and fairly well insulated development teams; I am happy that we’ve seem to hit our stride, with a predictable velocity and common set of risks.
Unplanned Tasks
We’ve implemented some changes to our unplanned task tracking to make it quicker to enter them and also quantify their time impact.
Measuring
I’m taking a deeper dive into reporting beyond burn down/up charts, looking for ways to better communicate status, risk and overall capabilities.
Product Owners
We’re putting some thought and research into how we reengage some of our product owners, keeping them with us through out a project and build in some accountability on their end when they get pulled away. Our product owners are not in that role full time, nor are they in some cases project managers or even skilled in that area, at worst they function more as business analysts which I know is not at all ideal.
Scrum Master
This role needs a little tightening up, so that its focus is more on supporting the team’s day-to-day needs and less on managing last minute requests from users.
Not a big list to tackle but more than one item is on the meaty side, I’m excited to see what we discover.
Taarradhin 