Capacity Planning When Business Analysts are Part of Cross-functional team
Hi Team,
I am reading various blogs regarding Velocity Driven Sprint Planning vs Capacity Driven sprint planning for new teams.
I am currently working for one of my client for a newly formed team. The team does not have a velocity
My emphasis is more around capacity driven sprint planning. There are two BA's part of this team. Mostly their current skills will be utilised to help the product owner
prepare for next sprint PBI's. Obviously from capacity point of view, what will be their involvement in sprint planning except providing more details for stories. Should their capacity be substracted from total capacity of team as right now they are not upskilled to do any cross functional stuff like testing or development. We can just include part of their capacity in the sprint. My approach is the following.
- Understanding how much percentage they will be available for the entire sprint work. For example cross-skilling, helping other team members to achieve the sprint goal
- Include the above mentioned capacity to total capacity
- Rest of their time will be helping product owner elaborate stories
Looking forward for any better suggestions for the same.
Thanks,
Beenish
From what you say, it doesn’t sound as though their work is actually needed during a Sprint in order to create a “Done” increment. So unless there is an actual dependency, ought they to be considered members of the Development Team at all? Remember that there can be any number of stakeholders who liaise with a Product Owner when eliciting a backlog of work.