Skip to main content

Developers not updating the work is done

Last post 12:35 am September 17, 2016 by Ian Mitchell
4 replies
06:05 pm September 9, 2016

As a scrum master what should be done when development team members do not report that the work is done early,although they might have finished the work?


07:44 pm September 9, 2016

As the coach of a Scrum Team, you might try to enlighten the Development Team about how keeping the Sprint Backlog updated is important to Transparency. One technique which has serve me well was to ask the Development Team to brainstorm possible impacts of not maintaining Transparency. In this case I might gently lead them to the understanding that by not doing so, management may revert to traditional status updates; Or even worse, turn the productive Daily Scrum planning discussions into daily status reports. There is also the impact that the Product Owner does cannot review and provide feedback on the work as early, leading to late Sprint "surprises" of work not being accepted. Does that help? Do you have any additional thoughts on how you might proceed?


08:31 pm September 9, 2016

Good Points to follow.This does happens sometimes by not all members or same members of the development team do this.They do good work have always delivered .So when a task is of few days and sometime they finish it early they do not pickup new work . I think by not updating sprint backlog ,Developers(mostly contractors) do not want to do take up new work and bill as much as possible or they want to take a break without effecting there billing.


04:05 pm September 10, 2016

That is the old Parkinson Law at work - work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
In my experience it’s something very tough to fight in traditional project management. An Agile mindset/Scrum framework helps a lot. In general, if the daily scrum meetings are being held in an effective way, development team members end up being transparent and avoid looking inefficient/slow among their peers.


12:35 am September 17, 2016

> As a scrum master what should be done when development team
> members do not report that the work is done early,although they
> might have finished the work?

As a Scrum Master, what do you think a perceived need for "reporting" says about the team's ability to collaborate and the joint ownership of work? Would this be the right solution to the right problem?

Hint: what sort of WIP limits are the team currently observing, so that reporting and updating has actually become an issue?


By posting on our forums you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.

Please note that the first and last name from your Scrum.org member profile will be displayed next to any topic or comment you post on the forums. For privacy concerns, we cannot allow you to post email addresses. All user-submitted content on our Forums may be subject to deletion if it is found to be in violation of our Terms of Use. Scrum.org does not endorse user-submitted content or the content of links to any third-party websites.

Terms of Use

Scrum.org may, at its discretion, remove any post that it deems unsuitable for these forums. Unsuitable post content includes, but is not limited to, Scrum.org Professional-level assessment questions and answers, profanity, insults, racism or sexually explicit content. Using our forum as a platform for the marketing and solicitation of products or services is also prohibited. Forum members who post content deemed unsuitable by Scrum.org may have their access revoked at any time, without warning. Scrum.org may, but is not obliged to, monitor submissions.