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Thwarting Surprises

A logo change caused about three times more work for the team. They did not factor in the number of logos that had to be exchanged, or even the amount of time that each checkin would take. The commitment to the logo exchange user story created lots of pressure for the team. What would help this and other situations like it?

Planning is a good thing to do. Teams have multiple times to leverage planning techniques in order to stage the backlog for the next sprint. From ad-hoc conversations to formal "pre-planning" meetings, to the actual sprint planning meeting itself, teams and product owners should meet to continuously elaborate requirements on the basis of priority (as defined by user value).

Think about the tests. For example if the team were to think of how they would test the logo change, that discussion might have led them down the path of discovering all of the places they would have to test for it.

Agile test driven development practices focus on tests as the main point for discussion; through validating these tests (our assumptions) we discover more and come to agreement on intended functionality. If you think about it, it's a leaner approach to defining requirements.

Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 08:42PM by Registered CommenterStacia | CommentsPost a Comment

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