Applied project management#7 What happens after the sprint planning meeting?

One the sprint planning meeting is over, the next is sprinting. During sprinting, the team members volunteer for tasks (not features) and completes them. When all the tasks associated with a feature / story is completed, then it is moved to done status. Here the definition of done plays a crucial role. A good definition of done for a software project related task could be;

Coding done
Code reviews done
Unit testing completed
Integrated testing done

If the definition of done is stronger, the right spirit of 'done' which is 'nobody will work on it again' is achieved. Ironically i have seen very shallow definitions of done like ;ready for testing' . That is a problem, as well as an opportunity to improve further.

Teams which are conditioned for work allocation may find it difficult to switch over to work voiunteering overnight. Personally I am not really motivated when others allocate work to me. I am at my best, when I choose to do something. Even if a transition from work allocation to volunteering is slightly painful, it is a great opportunity for the engineer. I see it as a liberation of the engineer from the clutches of obsolete command and control styles. If you do not grab it with both hands, others will be telling you what you should be doing, till you retire. So grab this opportunity.

Here the capability to contribute to the product of the project matters. A traditional manager with only monitoring capability will fail miserably in these teams unless he / she is willing to unlearn and learn. Sometimes, false ego plays a destructive role here. To be frank, this is when I picked up story writing skills, and testing skills. I am grateful to agile for that constructive compulsion.

It is advisable for a person not to choose more than two to three tasks at a time. When you volunteer for a task, you write your name on the task (sticky note representing the task) and move it to being done status. When you complete the task you move it to done status. When all the team memebers does this religiously, work become very transparent.

Can a scrum master volunteer for regular tasks?. This is a question I receive very frequently. Technically there is no problem for this. Before volunteering for a task, think twice to ensure that you have the time and resources to complete it, else you will become a bottle neck.

While sprinting, you have daily standup meeting (scrum), where each team member gets 2 seconds to explain three things to the rest of the team;

What did I do yesterday?
What am I doing today?
What are the challenges I am facing and need help?

The sprint burndown chart is also updated daily. Will talk about these in detail later.

Good day
Abrachan

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