Issue in remaining within the time frames
Hi All,
I am facing an issue with my dev team lately. To give you all a background, we go ahead with a 2-week sprint everytime which means we get a total of 10 business working days to get our work done. To be on a safer side, we have already divided the first 8 days as dev days and remaining for testing. This only varies, if the dev team is able to release some of the stories early in the cycle to the testers then the division ratio becomes 7:3.
From last 2 sprints, we have picked up a major module which is not releasable in nature until the time the entire chunk is created. This entire piece will take 5 sprints work. So we are planning to deploy the module on 22nd Jun 2018. However, in JIRA, we are still continuing with 2-week sprints so that we can make sure that the work is done within the set timeline and doesn't get piled up in the end.
We do a Wednesday to Tuesday sprint wherein the deployment happens on Friday. For example, if the sprint kicked off on 23rd May (Wed), it will end on 5th Jun (Tue) and the deployment happens on a Friday i.e. 8th Jun. Since these stories are not being deployed until 22nd Jun, the dev team basically eats up either all the 10 days or 9 days in doing their work and sends stories to QA on the last day when the review is scheduled. The tester then quickly does the sanity checks to make sure the stories can be showcased to the entire stakeholders in the review meeting. Even though, had we were not deploying this together on 22nd, since the deployment happens on Friday, they at times delay the work cycle, and sends the stories to test after Tuesday, since the tester still gets Wed-Thur-Fri(half day) to the testing. We then do the deployment on Friday night.
There has been no impact as such but there is time boxing being managed. As per me, its something that needs to be addressed however I would like your views.
Please suggest.
It sounds like an excessive amount of work is being brought into progress by the team. Why is a batch of user stories being tested, rather than individual stories?
They are a part of a big functionality Ian. They cant be released after every sprint. They need to be released collectively in one go for the application to be more productive and impactful to the clients.
They were divided into a 2-week sprint so that we can make sure that the timelines are kept and work gets progressed and completed in time for the actual deployment.
Irrespective of any current beliefs about the release opportunities which may be possible, why are stories being batched before being tested?
If a user story is to satisfy the INVEST criteria, it ought to be independent and testable.
I would suspect that a sound splitting strategy around the work would help mitigate this situation. It may be worthwhile to consult an Agile Coach knowledgeable in splitting strategies to help you.
Keep in mind that your Definition of Done should be around "potentially releasable" increments of functionality. You shouldn't feel the need to stack up items at any stage in your workflow to represent an actual releasable product.
Also, it seems that you are not practicing Scrum in your sprints, but you're trying to execute a mini-waterfall in your sprint time box. Ask yourself what can be completed and delivered by the team in just a day or two (developed, tested, and validated by the PO)? Just because you haven't thought of it yet, doesn't mean that it isn't possible. Again, an Agile Coach can help you immensely in this area.
Good luck!