development cycle planning

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello all,

I totally support this move (obviously), and I hope it'll give good result. 
I'd like to also reiterate Aaron's caution words (can't tell who stole them 
from who at that point):
 If for the first few sprints it doesn't work nicely, that's OK. It's 
completely part of the learning process, and the rules we use for now are here 
to be adapted later based on what will happen in the next few months, they're 
not set in stone.

Now just adding a few more points to Aaron email, see how we already have our 
first smallish issues to deal with. ;-)

On Sunday 1 May 2011 17:39:12 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> you can then start adding features and stories to the Sandbox, and Marco,
> Kevin and/or myself (the "scrum masters") will triage them into the product
> backlog (which is where features/stories wait for scheduling).

Just to build up a bit more on the roles, which we probably didn't talk about 
enough during Tokamak 5, here is some extra information:
 * Marco and Aaron are indeed able to triage for the product backlog as they 
hold the "Product Owner" role;
 * I will have for the time being the "Scrum Master" role (as seen in the 
tool, and although I prefer less guru like naming usually like "Agile Coach" 
or just "Coach"). ;-)

Consequence: I'm not Product Owner, and so can't triage the backlog myself. 
I'll extensively communicate with the Product Owners though to help with the 
process, try to detect issues in granularity, estimation or planning.

> at the start of each sprint, we will have 3 days where we will discuss what
> each of us would like to have scheduled for that sprint and the scrum
> mastesr will move things around to reflect the results.

s/scrum masters/product owners/ otherwise correct.

Note however, that one of my responsibilities as coach will be to try to 
facilitate as much as possible the work done on the stories, which in practice 
means that I'll probably ask "dumb" questions during the discussion phase just 
to help figure out if we reached the right level of granularity for stories or 
features (Aaron and Marco had a long session with me yesterday of that type... 
they're likely still tired from it). ;-)

iceScrum comes with a comment system, so once something is in the backlog I 
could use either that or the mailing list to raise attention to a story. I 
think I have a small preference for the comment system at that point, just to 
keep everything tied together at the same place. So I'd propose we start with 
that, and if that doesn't work we'll use the mail instead later on.

Also, at the beginning of a sprint, I'll try to help as much as possible with 
the task splitting, especially to make sure we'll meet our definition of done 
(you can see it from the sprint plan). Since it's likely a lot of work, I 
might have to reduce the communication overhead to decide to add a task right 
away, so if you see such tasks appearing, don't worry, that's me raising the 
quality flag. ;-)

> if things come up during the sprint period (innevitable :) then we can also
> add things as needed in response to requests / threads on the mailing list
> here.

Note however that I might have a tendency to push back for changes within the 
boundaries of a sprint to avoid perturbations as much as possible, my rule of 
thumb is generally the following:
 * If that's something which is needed to refine existing stories, or because 
a story was badly split it might get in;
 * Otherwise it'll get a push back, or will have to be traded with something 
else (which will then be postponed at a later sprint).

The goal being to be able to have a somewhat reliable velocity measurement in 
the long run. Note also that's why it's sane to have different people being 
Product Owner and Scrum Master, there's de facto a tension between those two 
roles (as to be dealt as gentlemen though... but I trust Aaron and Marco on 
that), indeed:
 * Product Owners try to get as much value out of the team as fast as 
possible;
 * Scrum Masters try to maintain the quality level and to facilitate the whole 
team work especially keeping a sane pace (PO and developers alike).

Since we're in the first sprint obviously that tension doesn't show much as 
the pace is not known yet (I expect it to be rather high though, but we'll 
see, there's also the impact of the change of habits to take into account).

I think that's it for now, let's fill up that backlog and that first release 
plan. ;-)

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud patron of KDE, http://www.kdab.com
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