1. SE 3800 Note 7 Planning, Impediments Ch. 3
Dr. Rob Hasker
Dr. Brad Dennis
SE 3800 Note 7 Planning, Impediments Ch. 3

2. Shortcut 7: Scrum Staging
Keep the team together
Easy in school, very difficult elsewhere
Everyone else wants good people, too!
DeMarco & Lister: 3 person-months lost for every new team hire
The team which sits together works together
Estimates are estimates
“How long will it take to do this month-long task”?
If want estimates to be perfect, go find a doghouse to build.

3. Shortcut 7: Scrum Staging
Sustainable development
80 hour work weeks accomplish about the same as 50

4. Shortcut 8: Sprints & Planning
Month-long sprints: minimal overhead, but low response
Intense pressure to add PBIs
Pre-sprint planning
PO: all PBIs available w/ some acceptance criteria
May even create initial set of test cases
Ensure have explicit sprint goal
Can have PBIs not in goal, goal specifies priority

5. Shortcut 8: Sprints & Planning
What is the team capacity?
# team members * 40 * weeks?
What about planning, review, retro?
Production support: just move out of sprint
Textbook: 6 hrs/day per developer

6. Shortcut 8: Planning PO uses velocity to determine PBIs to consider
Sizes already specified!
Team considers each PBI in turn
Estimate hours per task, refine PBI size
Repeat until full capacity
PO might not be present, but available for ?

7. Shortcut 8: Planning What’s a task?
A small, testable slice of a PBI
Limit to 8 hrs – probably 4 in SDL
Each task performed by 1 developer only
Or developer pair!
Remember to include tasks for review prep
That is, time to set up demo for review
What to do w/ small amts of extra capacity?
Just allow team to add next PBI w/ no intent to complete
Preferable than digging down for small PBIs

8. Shortcut 8: Planning 7 P’s (British army adage):
Keep track of sprint planning goals:
Ensure all stakeholders know where the priorities are, what is going to be done
Is this the real plan-driven development?
Proper
planning and
preparation
prevents
piss-poor
performance.

9. Shortcut 9: Impediments
Definition: event that impedes any developer from working to anticipated sprint capacity.
Common impediments:
Large magnitude meetings
Unrefined product backlog
Not needed for Scrum teams!
Absent or unempowered PO
Individualistic incentives
Business meetings a necessity
“Disney trip for top developer”
Illness – go home!
Individual-based performance reviews
Broken builds
Issues with tools
No ‘I’ in ‘Scrum team’
Unreliable/overburdened supplier

10. Shortcut 9: Impediment Control
Keeping impediments from taking over: ConTROL
1. Confirm
Raise issue when found
Track, monitor each
2. Triage
Tackle 1 or 2 at a time
3. Remove
Seek outside help?
Make a PBI?
4. Outline
Keep POs, sponsors in loop
5. Learn
Analyze impediments in retrospective
Goal: minimize impact when reoccur

11. Shortcut 9: Impediments
Impediment vs. blockage
Block: stopped progress on task, but blocked task not slowing down overall progress
Often: newly identified task dependency resulting in waiting for another task
Critical issue: ensure blocks are visible
ScrumMaster: needs to know, needs to know plan to clear blockage

12. Ch. 3 Review 7: Setting the Scrum Stage
Collocate teams, minimize changes
8: Plan the Sprint, Sprint the Plan
Sprint length
Realistic sprint capacity
Structuring sprint planning
9: Incriminating Impediments
Definitions: impediment, block
Types of impediments to watch for
How to ConTROL impediments