Mobile scrum team and story points
Hi everyone.
I am SM on a scrum team that have the following members:
- 1 UX
- 1 QA
-2 Android Devs
- 2 IoS Devs
- 1 DevOps
The question is, how is the better way to estimate points on planning considering that the Android devs cant help IOS devs??
The estimate on android devs was 13, because they need to refactor some code, the estimate on ios devs was 5. They can´t help each other, so they are making different efforts. Should i consider only the higher estimate, should i add both estimates and count as 18 ?? Any tips?
Irrespective of who does what, why can't they reach a team-based consensus? Don't the developers with iOS skills believe that the android code needs refactoring?
To add to Ian's comment, on our team, here, we've really sought to embrace the "t-shaped people" ethic of having everyone understand some of each other person's skill set, such that the iOS devs would get familiar with some of the work the Android devs are doing and vice-versa. This will expand everyone's knowledge base, as well as making it easier for team members to come to a consensus on things like point estimation; more importantly, it will improve everyone's capacity to troubleshoot and review each other's work.
Hi there!
Seems like a couple of things that need to be resolved here, all of which goes back to the Development team being self-enabling:
- While each team member has their own specialization, the Development Team has all the skills and experience needed to complete a user story.
- There is no exclusive owner of a User Story within a sprint, as the entire Development Team is responsible for completing all work required to get this User Story to its definition of done.
- Planning Poker encourages the Development Team to come to a consensus for what they believe is the estimated effort for a User Story (as Ian mentioned).
It might be a good idea to be conservative and take the higher estimate, but both Android and iOS devs should be able to state their case as to why they chose their estimates, take those into consideration, and do another round of Planning Poker, until they reach an agreement. In the long term, the team's overall velocity and experience working together can help get to common estimate sooner.
Out of curiosity, though - are both iOS and Android devs working simultaneously on one User Story? If they aren't, is it possible to break the User Story into one for either platform? It could probably fall under the INVEST mnemonic still.
Yes, the IoS developpers agree that android devs need refactoring, so they will consense on the android points?
Ian, the Ios devs believe that android devs need a refactoring, so they should agree with a higher story points?
Michael, this is the best scenario i can see. I will try to apply this on my team.
Interesting! Thanks for all advices, i will consider all of them!
You all made clear what i have to do! Thanks!