The First Sprint
The first sprint planning meeting went pretty much by the book.
Isaac had done his homework and came to the meeting with a
comprehensive list of features the software needed to provide.
There was healthy discussion, and Isaac amended the list to include
some features that the team felt was necessary. The afternoon
session featured Isaac, the product owner, prioritizing the
features in the product backlog with feedback from the team. The
final segment was devoted to the team deciding among themselves
which high priority features they would commit to build within the
four-week sprint. Atul did a good job of reminding the team that
they were expected to build a fully functional feature. This
tempered the team’s enthusiasm, and in the end a challenging but
doable set of features was assigned to the sprint backlog for the
first sprint.
The first couple of daily Scrum meetings were a bit awkward as
members were careful not to step on each other’s toes. One of the
first impediments identified was not having a shared understanding
of how a self-organizing team worked. Atul kept emphasizing that it
was up to the team to decide who does what and when. Then one
morning it just suddenly clicked and members came forward claiming
work they felt needed to be done. After that the daily scrums took
on a life of their own, interrupted only when a member had to do
five push-ups for every minute late. The pace of work picked up,
and there was a shared enthusiasm as tasks and ultimately
functional features werecompleted in rapid fashion. Dineo worked
side by side with the other software engineers to solve problems
and share what they had learned. Occasionally Isaac would be called
into the project room to answer questions about specific features
and be shown work in progress.
By the time of the first sprint review meeting, the team was able
to demonstrate all but one of the designated features to Isaac and
even three more that were not on the initial hit list. The team got
some useful feedback not only from Isaac but also from a couple of
the end users he brought with him. Eighty percent of the features
were proclaimed done by Isaac while the others needed only slight
modifications. Everyone agreed that the next Sprint review would
even be more successful.
The sprint retrospective meeting was refreshing as members spoke
candidly about both the good and the bad. Everyone agreed that the
team needed to do a better job at documentation. Issues regarding
fairness and spreading both the fun work and the tough work among
the entire team were brought to the surface. Dineo was impressed by
how everyone focused on what was best for the project not just
themselves.
The Second Sprint
The second sprint meeting went well. The features that needed
rework after the first sprint review meeting were at the top of the
backlog and Isaac made appropriate adjustments in priorities, and a
couple of new features that were discovered during thesprint review
meeting were added. The meeting convened with the team confident
that they would be able to complete the work they had committed
to.
Project work progressed quickly over the next week. Dineo felt
pressure to accomplish what she said she would at the daily Scrum.
At the same time, she felt a tremendous amount of satisfaction
reporting work done. The entire team seemed energized. Then one day
everything came to a standstill over a sticky integration problem.
The team struggled over the next three days trying to solve the
problem until, at the nextScrum, Atul stepped forward saying, “I
think you should do this . . .” He then proceeded to outline a
specific method for solving the problem, even assigning specific
tasks to each team member. During the next two days Atul went back
and forth between team members coordinating their work and solving
problems. While there was some grumbling within the team, his
solution worked, and Dineo was grateful to get back on track.From
then on Atul took a more active role in daily Scrum meetings, often
having the final say as to the work agenda for that day. The
meetings took on a different toneas members waited for Atul to
speak first. Isaac was absent from the project room during this
time as he was visiting sites that would be using the new software.
Still, features were being completed and Dineo was happy with the
progress. Then one day Isaac showed up at the morning Scrum
meeting. He had just gotten back and had fresh information he
wanted to introduce into the project. He had rewritten the product
log and added several new, high priority features and eliminated a
few of the features that the team had been working on. He wanted
the team to shift their efforts and completethe new features by the
end of the sprint.
The team was shocked because one of the principles they had been
taught is that you don’t change course midway through a sprint.
Atul did his best to explain this to Isaac, but he was insistent.
He kept saying that these changes had to be made, otherwise much of
the sprint output would be a waste of time. He kept repeating that
the team neededto be flexible. “After all, isn’t that what the
agile approach is all about?” The meetingcame to an impasse until
Atul came forward with a compromise. The team would agree to do the
new work, but the sprint needed to be extended by two weeks.
Everyone agreed and Dineo went back to work.
Up till the end of the second sprint, Atul continued to direct
project work. When it came for the sprint review meeting four of
the five new features were completed as well as most of the
original features. However, the feature demonstrations did not
gowell. Isaac and several of the end users that were present were
critical of the user friendliness of several of the completed
features. Dineo and other team members defended their work by
saying, “Why didn’t you tell us you wanted it to perform thatway?”
Atul did his best to keep the meeting under control, but the team
had little tosay when an important feature simply did not work. In
the end, only half of the features were accepted as being
done.
Dineo walked out of the sprint review discouraged. Tomorrow morning
was the sprint retrospective meeting. She had a lot on her mind,
but wasn’t sure what she should say or how to say it at the
meeting
Critically review the issues confronting the Big Foot
project.
