Should the team member of scrum team evaluate tasks from the domain in which he has no competence, during sprint planning meeting?
Let's consider the real world example.
Cross-functional Team structure: 4 back-end engineers, 1 front-end, 2 QAs, 1 BI, PO, SM.
Quote from the Scrum Guide
“Individual Development Team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as a whole”
They are developing an e-commerce website which is selling some goods. Product owner has allocated the number of user stories for assessment on sprint planning meeting.
1. User story #1 requires all expertise (BI, QA, BackEnd and FrontEnd work)
2. User Story #2 (FrontEnd, BI only)
3. User Story #3 (BackEnd work only)
As a Scrum team, we are committing to deliver this user stories as the whole team at the end of the sprint. For the first user story team provides following estimates:
- BackEnd - 5sp
- FrontEnd - 3sp
- UI - 1sp
- QA - 3sp
Question: Which estimate should we choose and why?
My Answer: After estimation, the team argues and discuss why each one provided this estimation, and probably we will take the highest number 5.
This number includes efforts that need to be done from all team because BE, FE, UI, QA work can be done in parallel.
Question: Do you have the same thoughts here? Or how do you do in your teams?
In case number #3 (the same for case number 2)
Question: Why (or should) FE, UI developer commit and take the responsibility of the estimation where he does not have any expertise?
Question: If the answer to the previous "yes he should estimating BE task", which tools/techniques can I use to convince him?
Sorry for so many questions in one topic did not know how to break them down into different subject areas
If people view work in terms of these individual skill-silos, are they really a team at all? Where would the teamwork be? Could they collaborate to meet a Sprint Goal, or merely “commit” to doing their own bits of user stories?
Why is the Product Owner “allocating” work for consideration? Where’s the teamwork there?
Ian,
Team collaborates with each other on questions of how to integrate their work in one working/valuable increment.
Each team member knows on a high level output of each part.
But how FronEnd member can know, how many efforts required to accomplish output from the specific area is where he does not have any knowledge?
Shouldn’t he collaborate with other team members in order to improve that knowledge, so estimates become better over the course of time? Isn’t that part of teamwork?
Which is more important: gradually learning to inspect and adapt as a team, or continuing as individuals?
If considering teamwork - yes, each team member have to know what his peers are doing.
But immersing deepper.
If the estimates beetwen BE and FE, are totally different. FE dev would not be able to argue on a deep level about the problem statement,
only on a surface which is based of his previous experience, or using comparision table
I would have answer like this:
We are commiting as a Team on sprint goal. Failure sprint, it's not the fault of a certain developer, this is the team fail. Each voice does matter.
What is your thoughts about this?
Which other tools/techniques Scrum gives us to convince the people of importance to assess tasks not even from their area?
Did you face with this situation in your experience? What did you do and what was the end result?
Thanks.
In my team, when let's say UI does not know how to do back-end, he does not estimate. However, we always listen to each other to assess every important bit of information, because yes, we are forecasting as a team.
Which other tools/techniques Scrum gives us to convince the people of importance to assess tasks not even from their area?
Nothing. People either value teamwork, and wish to learn and become better at it, or they don’t.
What Scrum does provide us with are the values people must hold if Scrum is to be implemented well.