39
zteater
5y

Agile in practice.

I finished my story with 3 days left in our 2 week sprint.

Me: What story should I pull in next?
PM: Story <number> to add <new feature>
Me: ok, sounds good
PM: Will you finish it before our sprint ends?
Me: No, probably will take me 5-7 days.
PM: But it can't spill over, it will make our metrics look bad.
Me: I can't finish it in 3 days.
PM: ....
Me: Can't you just explain the spillover as us working ahead?
PM: It will look bad on our <automated-report>
Me: ....
Me: So don't want me to get started on <new feature>?
PM: ....
Me: <internally sighing> What do you want me to do?
PM: Maybe you can pair program with <Overpaid-Idiot-Programmer> to help finish their story
Me: ....
Me: feelsbadman.jpg

Comments
  • 5
    I dont see the problem. Start working in the task, log time on a ft you have finished. Next sprint continue working on that same task, excpt this week log your time on the correct tckt.
  • 10
    If the metrics make the pm look bad when you work ahead, the metric is wrong
  • 2
    Possible other conversation
    ( business 5.0 ) :

    A: We need to fire couple of people, we need some money to keep businesses running.
    B: Start with those IT guys they earn a lot and I always see them fucking around.
    A: Let’s also hire 2 homeless for one IT guy so chart will look good. Everyone can learn to type on keyboard.

    6 months later
    A: Let’s file for IPO to cover our mistakes.
    B: At least stupid investors would only look on beautiful charts not inside our systems.
  • 2
    I used to have a PM that wanted all development to stop while QA would test something.
  • 3
    That isn’t agile in practice. I don’t know what to call it but it’s not agile.

    Agile is good when it’s done properly. Thing is it’s rarely done properly, in which case it isn’t agile. It’s just bad management combined with ill informed dev teams.
  • 0
    Youre supposed to pull the work in and if you finish great, add to velocity calculation. If you don't ignore it.

    Better yet pull in very small sprint filler stories that you probably will finish at least 1 and then that means a normal calculation. Ignore whatever isn't finished.

    That said my scrum master literally works 1 day a month when my teng lead emails her the stories and who will do them and she does data entry for the day. That makes my head hurt.
  • 1
    Wouldn't an alternative be to break down the feature into smaller bits, and do one of them before the sprint ends?
  • 0
    @nanoandrew4 if you can break down a story smaller it should be anyway as that is a core principle
  • 0
    Agile or branching problem?
  • 0
    @devrocket that is a normal worflow somehow, devs stop while Qa qa
  • 2
    @craig939393 There should be common sense limits to this principle. I’ve seen agile coaches trying to get us to break the simplest tasks into multiple issues that generate more overhead than actually doing it.
  • 1
    I don't know much about agile but am quite sure that bringing in a process like this is a hindrance to aggressive development.
  • 1
    @mundo03 on a feature sure but not the whole project.
  • 0
    @devrocket i know, people don't understand they can keep working
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