Monday 7 March 2016

Agile Nuggets: Common questions

Last weekend I attended ATA Vadodara Meet 3 at Baroda Management Association. We had very good and interactive sessions on-
  • Introduction to Agile - Scrum Development by Mr. Khushru Doctor 
  • Introduction to ASP.net core 1.0 by Mr. Afzal Qureshi
As we all know that Technical sessions always grab the attention of developers and the same happened with the session on ASP.net core 1.0. Once again I saw the charm of ‘open source’, this time with APS.net core.

The interesting and most important thing I observed was the great enthusiasm towards Agile practices being followed in software development among all the attendees. The Speaker was very open and patient. This helped attendees to ask lots and lots of queries and to quench their thirst and know more and more about Scrum.

I have listed a few topics discussed here so these could reach to other Agile practitioners who could not attend this session.

1. What should be optimum length of a Sprint?

2. Why some teams use modified Fibonacci sequence?

3. How much Buffer should we keep during estimation of stories?

4. From where we can get Planning Poker cards?

5. Can we have changes in Definition of Done?

What should be optimum length of a Sprint?
Though most of the teams in agile world (more than 70%) opt for two week long Sprints but it depends on the nature of the project. Recently two of my teams opted for one week long sprints. These teams felt that there were lot of uncertainties and ‘Fail fast’ would be more helpful for the team.

There is a misconception that in a one week long sprint the sprint ceremonies like planning, review, retrospective etc. consumes time as team has to go every week for these ceremonies. But as we all know that the duration of ceremonies are directly proportionate to the length of the sprint.

Why some teams use modified Fibonacci sequence?
The idea of story points is not to bind the thought (size verses hours) during estimation of stories. The sizing should not be so precise that it becomes hindrance during estimation.

     Excerpt from Mike Cohn’s Blog-Why do the cards deviate slightly from the Fibonacci sequence?

We’re anal software people, too. We know that the Fibonacci sequence should go from 8 to 13 to 21. We use 20, though, instead of 21. Of course we used 21 in the early days, but dropped it after meeting with a product owner who looked at the 21 and said, “Oh, a 21. You must be very confident to give such a precise estimate. Most people would have called it 20 or 25, but you called it 21.” We replied that we used the Fibonacci sequence. The product owner said, “The Fibo-what?” After which, we decided that deviating from the Fibonacci sequence would be better because the numbers started to imply a very high level of precision that just wasn’t there.

The 1/2 is included because after awhile some teams decide they want some room in between “free” (a zero) and one. Using 1/2 isn’t something a team should do a lot, but it’s a nice option to have in some cases. More on- http://store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/pages/faqs


How much Buffer should we keep during estimation of stories?
I would strongly say, NOT at all. When we go for estimation we follow sizing. This may be Story points with Poker planning, T-Shirt sizing, Animal sizing etc. Clearly we see there are slots for sizing and these are not distributed even. For example if a story is larger than 8 point which may be of 10 or 11 point but the next number in series is 13. This helps to avoid preciseness during estimation. One important point to note is that keeping buffer will lead team to be underutilized and will slow down the velocity. Also, team will lose the essence of planning and discussion over estimated points by other team-members. Team-members will agree with the largest estimation as everybody will start thinking to have buffer.

From where we can get Planning Poker cards?


Many places for example,

• leanpitch.com/playscrum-cards/ (Pune)
• store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/
Amazon.com
• …..many other stores
• In addition, there are lots of Planning poker apps, can be downloaded from Play stores.
• For distributed teams we can use online poker planning. Please refer PlanningPoker.com .
• Even we can download printable Planning poker from internet and get it printed.

Can we have changes in Definition of Done?
Yes, we can have changes in DOD. After all continuous improvement is the success mantra for Agile teams. We inspect and adapt!

     Excerpt from Mike Cohn’s Blog-




          Excerpt from Kenneth S. Rubin’s book- Essential Scrum:


I hope you have enjoyed this post. If any reader has any question, please feel free to ask. I would also look forward to suggestions from readers as I could be wrong at places explaining these points.