Comments on: New to Agile? Use a Rules of Engagement document.

By: Bob Hartman

Bob Hartman — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:24:19 +0000

Sandra, at the start of an iteration or sprint (during planning) a team will not commit to more work than they completed in the previous iteration. However, if they finish the work with time remaining in the iteration they can pull more work from the prioritized product backlog. In this way they can complete more work and in the next iteration their commitment will be based on a higher number.

By: Sandra

Sandra — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:11:49 +0000

>>Use the rule of “yesterday’s weather” for iteration velocity and therefore will never commit >>to more work in an iteration than was completed in the prior iteration.

How do you test the limits of the team if you don’t add work to the Sprint?

By: Bob Hartman

Bob Hartman — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:34:14 +0000

Stephan, if the team finishes all of the work for an iteration early they are supposed to take more work from the backlog. In that case “yesterday’s weather” will be higher than it was before, and the team will have improved.

However, improvement can also involve other things. It can be easier to do certain types of testing, or planning meetings can be more efficient. Those are just two examples, but there are many, many more ways to “improve” that don’t necessarily reflect in the velocity of the team.

- Bob -

By: Stephan Schmidt

Stephan Schmidt — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:20:26 +0000

“3. Use the rule of “yesterday’s weather” for iteration velocity and therefore will never commit to more work in an iteration than was completed in the prior iteration.”

and

“8. Strive to improve every iteration.”

doesn’t make sense to me in combination

Cheers
Stephan
http://twitter.com/codemonkeyism

By: Bob Hartman

Bob Hartman — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:13:25 +0000

For Team #9 “at standup” would not be sufficient. That would imply an impediment could exist for 23 hours and 45 minutes before getting exposed to anyone else. I like the “as soon as possible” wording. The Scrum Master isn’t only working during the daily stand-up!

For Team #10 it goes back to the way the team was taught. When a developer (or other) is unclear on how something should work, they can get a lot of clarity by asking “How will I know I’ve done that?” The resulting answer is acceptance criteria rather than diving into the details. I have a blog entry on it here.

Team #11 is about making sure no one assigns work (push system) but rather that everyone pulls work using the same rule. It is to encourage swarming on the highest priority items in order to get them to “done” as quickly as possible.

As for retrospectives, the team is doing all of the normal Scrum meetings, so they do retrospectives. I guess they didn’t think they had to call that out as a special case.

I hope the above explanations help.

By: DeanG

DeanG — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:06:12 +0000

Darn, this didn’t fit into a twitter response. This is very useful, Thank you!

Thoughts for your next round of editing…
Should “The team will” be “The team member will”, or will that help break the first part down into two groups? Committment of team to organization, and Team members to other team members. This is my dilemna with Team #1.
Team #5 I would Bullet this one before hanging it on the wall.
Team #9 Is “At standup” soon enough to replace “As soon as possible”?
Team #10. I need to learn more about this as I may be missing a critical cue, but the logic here isn’t making the connection for me.
Team #11. This one is too long and seems to try to cram a lesson on Priority vs. Value into a focus rule regarding the current and next item. Maybe I missed the point, but like #10, that’s why I’m noting it.

I was surprised not to see an entry in the Team section regarding Retrospectives.