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Personal productivity?

Last post 09:22 am September 24, 2014 by Edson Alcalá
5 replies
12:23 pm September 22, 2014

Hello everyone, I am starting in the agile world and I work as a software developer and I'm here looking for help of experts people in the agile world and I hope you can help to me. Thanks in advance.
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Actual situation: In my actual team we are 5 members and we have a team leader, also we work in a little company and the company give to us a bonus every month if we achieve our monthly goals(this monthly goals are base on the customer expectations for every sprint)
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Now the leader has given to me the responsibility of monthly goals but the manager of the company want more details about productivity... I want to explain the situation.
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How is it working? Our current sprint has 3 weeks length and our customer assign to us every sprint user stories with the estimation and expectation for the sprint.
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For example:
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Team:
Team #1
User stories assigned :
User story #1 with estimation 3 user story points
User story #2 with estimation 5 user story points
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So when manager demands the monthly goals I send this expectations, but the manager wants more details,
He want a kind of personal productivity(for example errors, bugs for every person depending of the task).

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What Did I say to the manager? I replied to the manager that if we wants more details we can start with the sprint burndown chart, because we don't use this.
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But talking about productivity I replied that maybe is not a good idea because he wants to add more complexity to the process and there is not real value to the team but...
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Another consideration is that we are 2 teams working to the same customer and sometimes the customer wants a complete team working fixing bugs, and there is another problem because how can we measure the personal productivity of people working in bugs?
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If a team is working in user stories we can know the velocity but bugs?
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What is your opinion?
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Thanks you so much, Sorry about my english.
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Cheers


04:54 am September 23, 2014

Hi Edson,

actually I'm NOT an expert in the agile world, but maybe my opinion is still of some value to you. So, here it is:

If your manager wants to measure the personal productivity, he isn't agile-hearted. One of the 12 Principles behind the Agile Manifesto is:
"Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done."
The Development Team in Scrum is self-organizing. No one may tell them what to do. The only thing the Development Team must be able to report every day (according to the Scrum Guide) is "how it intends to work together as a self-organizing team to accomplish the goal and create the anticipated Increment in the remainder of the Sprint". They don't even have to track their individual achievements. They just have to know what is not done, turn it into done and report if they can still accomplish the Sprint Goal.

The micromanagement your manager is performing is not helpful and should be eliminated by the Scrum Master, as it is an impediment to the team.


05:44 am September 23, 2014

Hi,
I agree that the first thing you want to do is change from command and control to agile management.
This means you will need the roles Scrum Master and Product Owner, if you want to use Scrum as framework.
Sprint goals will not be stated by the customer, but negotiated between Product Owner (which can be the customer) and Development Team.
Your team leader might become Scrum Master, but he will need coaching to make the transition from micromanagement to removing your impediments.


08:38 am September 23, 2014

In Scrum there is no measure of personal productivity. Rather, there is a measure of team productivity.

Team productivity is the ability of a team to deliver increments of release quality each and every Sprint. The proof of success lies in ongoing delivery. This is what organizational stakeholders, including managers, should value in agile practice.


01:35 pm September 23, 2014

If the mgr is dying for metrics, send him to EBMgt.org


09:22 am September 24, 2014

Thank you all for your comments, It was really helpful, thanks a lot :)


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