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How are tasks handled by the development team when having different skills set ?

Last post 04:31 pm November 4, 2019 by Ian Mitchell
2 replies
Jefri Martinez
10:37 pm November 3, 2019

Our team has a way of measuring how many points we can enter inside the sprint based on previous history points gained. We are a total of 12, but 7 are software developers, and the rest is distributed in QA, Infrastructure, DBA, and Scrum Master. 

My question is, Should tasks be specifically separated for those people inside the team even if they don't contribute to the sprint goal? because basically on sprint planning all tasks that are included from the backlog are the development of new features but meanwhile everyone else whose expertise is not programming is waiting to test a specific feature and doing others stuff like meetings and getting things done related to their daily activities which are not on tasks on board. which means the next spring we have more points gained if we meet the goal, which means more work for developers specifically.

Our formula takes into consideration that 12 people are working on the development which is true because in the development team everyone has something that contributes to meet the goal, but if all tasks on board are set for development of new features most pressure goes to developers.

Open to recommendations. 

Thanks in advance. 

Nils Hyoma
02:50 pm November 4, 2019

Hi Jefri,

the developers should only estimate the work they are able to archive in my opinion. How they will estimate, it's a decision of the team itself.

Sounds like you have 4-5 people on which the team has to depend on. Dependencies are risks for the dev team and they should be mitigated.

Better build cross functional team(s) with the mandatory workers (maybe with the DBA) as member of the scrum team. Then try to organize the work with the vision the dev team can create releasable software. Maybe put QA in the DOD and DOR, give DB and Infrastructure rights to the Dev Team, etc. Ask your team what it is missing for that vision.

Hope that helps

Nils

 

 

 

 

 

Ian Mitchell
04:31 pm November 4, 2019

Should tasks be specifically separated for those people inside the team even if they don't contribute to the sprint goal?

Isn't the Sprint Goal a coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives?

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