It has been now 4 weeks that I started the transition to scrum in my company. The first sprint was very chaotic, and I couldn’t even qualify is as a sprint, We had a backlog that we discussed with the product owner, and our business expert, but it was not well prioritized, we didn’t estimate the items, neither did we select a set of features to commit to. It was a first shot, trying to get the feeling of it, and warm up a bit the tools and the idea behind this. It was chaotic, but still better than no plans at all, we could feel the difference brought by the communication required when creating a product backlog, and during the daily scrums.
Unfortunately, In the rush, I forgot to set up a retrospective after the first sprint. Well, it was a lot of improvement required on my side, to coach the team, and drive us to better practices, I knew already what was missing, and that was enough work to achieve before asking them for feedback about our new processes and practices.
The second sprint was already slightly better, we tried to create our first sprint backlog, estimated the user stories using planning poker, and we created a burn-down chart to monitor our progress.
The result was quite good. We managed to finish almost all the stories that we planned, And the few items that had not been finished were due to a incredible amount of support suddenly coming in. Consequently the sprint review was very satisfying for everybody. the progress was obvious, and we could really be proud of showing our work for the first time!
This time I am happy that I didn’t forget the sprint retrospective. But before telling you about the retrospective, you need to know more about how we implemented some scrum concepts in our organization.
The retrospective has a simple goal : Continuous Improvement.
The process is quite simple, and give a maximum of feedback on how efficient is your workflow. Here is how I proceeded. I used a white board on which I drew 3 Columns :
- Positive +++
- Negative ---
- Solutions
I first asked each person what were the positive points they could notice during the last 2 weeks and listed them in the positive column. It is very important to start with the positive things not to cast a cloud over the meeting… After that I asked each person what were impediments that hindered their work during the last 2 weeks, and listed them in the negative column. And finally I invited everybody to find a way to reduce the problems they just mentioned, and list the propositions in the Solution problems.
We concluded the meeting by agreeing on few practices that we will follow during the next iteration, and see in the next retrospective if they improved the quality of our process.
To give you an idea, here is the Retrospective report I sent by mail to everybody after the meeting :
Scrum Retrospective Report 23/09/2009
As I presented it to all of you 1 month ago, being agile is not only about being able to accept changes easily, it is also to commit to a continuous improvement of the processes and the quality of our work.
We will be having this meeting after each sprint, to get a feedback from everybody on the current practices, and try to find ways to improve them.
| Positive points notified.
· Daily standup meeting +++
· Team work +++
· Collaboration
· Pair programming
· Focus ++
· Feedback on results
· General atmosphere
| Negative points I will group the items in 2 categories :
Interrupted work
· Multiple urgent projects in parallel (can't let any aside) Interrupted work
· Access to technical info for support.
Work tools optimization :
· server
· slow system (sources)
· legacy code => hard to change, hard to improve, not confident in making changes...
· Workstation problems (Tonje, Antonio, Kai)
· Burn-down chart has not been kept up to date at the end of sprint (lack of metrics)
|
As a result of this meeting the following practices have been agreed on :
1. Support should be first given a rough estimate of the complexity of it by the developers, then discussed with Kai or Morten to prioritize it according to the time it would take.
2. Small meeting to update the burn-down chart will be hold every day. Ultimately, having those metrics done by the system would be the best.
3. Technical are being taken care of starting today (server installation)
After this sprint, I feel confident that we are heading to the right direction. The next sprint will be better, and the one after even better! This is what we must aim at.
The detail that was very nice to get as a feedback is that we welcomed a new employee 3 days earlier. Like everybody else, I invited him to be part of the Daily scrums, and to give his opinion in this first retrospective. His positive contribution was probably the most positive I marked on the board : General atmosphere. I strongly believe that the new processes we adopted are a playing a major factor in this feeling. :]. Scrum makes your office a place you enjoy working!
Thanks to Sean Hicks and RallySoftware for their hints on twitter.