Smarter Sprint Cycles, Better Deliverables

Suma C Shastry

IBM India Pvt Ltd

Agenda

Introduction Challenges Lessons Learnt Best Practices Followed Key Benefits Q & A

2

Introduction

3

•Complete ownership of products–Development–Testing–Level 3 Support

•Multiple fix pack releases•New release planned

Challenges

Very New to Agile

4

More releases, less resources! Ad Hoc communication mechanism

Challenges

HLD not available early Wrong Defects for the Sprint Late Critical defects

5

ID Team not aware of requirement Combined Burn down charts for new

development and support items

Result

Last minute hurry Defect Back log

Escalations Team’s low moral Not so happy ending

Lessons Learnt

Education on Agile Communication protocol Escalation mechanism HLD to be ready early Identification of ID requirements Focus on the sprint items Early Test blockers

Best practices Plan the sprint early

− Always before the current sprint ends − Probable sprint items are decided and

communicated well in advance− QA team meets prior to sprint meeting

Can we cover these items? Do we need extra infrastructure? Could some of the items be dropped? Could there be some new additions? Do we have enough resources?

Best practices

Dev, QA and ID Owners identified Identify sprint items Define check points

− HLD Available ? − Test plan ready?− ID defects opened?− Any other dependencies?− Any specific coverage required?

Best practices Define Internal milestones

− Development start − Demo to QA team − QA Complete− Defect fixes, verification− Go from QA − Sprint Demo to L2 and teams

Best practices

Communication protocol & Escalation mechanism defined

− Pre defined time slots for discussion− Scrums to discuss on daily progress

Best practices Defects, issues, observations tracked

daily− Test blockers notified to dev team− Known issues tracked separately− Scrum master to track and prepare a

status chart for every sprint

Best practices

Separate Burn down charts Sprint reflection meeting

and Feedback after every sprint

Key Benefits

Timely Deliverables− Reduction in invalid defects− Focused testing− Critical and Test block defects

found early in cycles− ID work could start parallely− Continuous learning

Key Benefits

Confident Team− Better managed work load− Less stressed team members− Happy management