Purpose: Daily checkpoint to synchronize and collaborate on achieving the Iteration Goals.
Attendees: Agile Team members, SM, PO
Facilitator: SM
Preparation: Updated work management tool or team board
Meeting's flow
Each Agile team member answer the questions:
What did I do yesterday to advance the Iteration Goals?
What will I do today to advance the Iteration Goals?
Are there any impediments that will prevent the team from meeting the Iteration Goals?
Recommended practices
Team member collaborates and synchronizes their work around the board
Alignment across the work until the next business day is created
Risks/impediments blocking the team are surfaced
Potential impacts on cross-depending teams or work items are discussed
Stories/enablers are moved to "Done" when they pass the DoD
Sprint Burndown is shown to assess the progress toward the completion of the sprint goal & commitment
16th minutes topics or follow up actions are agreed
Notes from HCD Observations
DSU on
Attendees: Rob Fay, Meaghan Hudak, Chelsea Brigg, Howard Montgomery, Amy Castellani.
Status report from the team
Several times Scrum Master was interrupted not being empowered for SM to play the role of Scrum Master
Scrum Master shared (16min) parking lot for further discussions
Great conversations about community and HCD and how they can plug into other areas. Artifacts and knowledge sharing, personas development
The parking lot turned into a sharing knowledge session where Chelsea shared the functionality of a new tool with HCD team
No discussion about sprint goals
Metrics were not shared, burn down or progress toward meeting the sprint commitment
Dependencies or blockers seemed a bit unclear.
The waiting column on kanban board doesn't appear to have WIP limits making it difficult to assess blockers or impediments.
Backlog Refinement
Foundation
Timebox: 1-4hrs/2 weeks iteration
Purpose: Provides time to identify dependencies and issues that could impact the next Iteration. Ensures that we have a ready backlog for Iteration planning
Attendees: PO, SM, Agile Team, and invited stakeholders
Facilitator: PO
Preparation: PO sends the list of candidate stories for the next iterations to the Agile Team at least 24h before the meeting
Meeting's flow
The PO presents the set of candidate stories for the next Iteration
The team discusses whether the set of candidate Stories should be reduced or increased; Stories are added or removed
The PO guides the team through the candidate stories one by one:
The team discusses each Story, estimates it, and splits it if necessary
The PO clarifies or supplements the acceptance criteria
The team identifies dependencies on other teams and coordinates with them as appropriate
Action items are summarized for all stories that still require external input or action
Recommended practices
Larger stories are elaborated into small consumable stories (DoR)
Relevant new stories are written by PO & team members
Acceptance Criteria are added/detailed for each story
Stories are sized relatively to the reference stories well known by the team
Each story with its acceptance criteria is discussed between PO & Team in a timebox session
Stories are linked to appropriate DEV team features/stories
Stories are checked against DoR
Enablers are checked against DoR
Refined stories & enablers with acceptance criteria are READY for the next Iteration
Identified dependencies resolved or with action to follow-up
New risks or impediments with the current plan are surfaced
Sprint Backlog is DEEP (Detailed appropriately, Emergent, Estimated, and Prioritized)
Notes from HCD Observation
Observation Date: 9/1/22
Duration: 1hr
Attendees: Rob Fay, Chelsea Brigg, Amy Castellani, Howard Montgomery, Meaghan Hudak, Brandy Barnette
Observations:
The team provided a review and status for existing OKRs. This seemed to be the primary objective of the meeting. Status was provided, and feedback was given to OKR POCs to facilitate continuing actions to achieve KRs.
Good team engagement – Everyone seems invested and willing to contribute feedback
After reviewing OKRs, the team began a walkthrough of Features/Stories. The context for the review was driven by Feature ownership/team members.
This component of the review seemed focused on work in progress (WIP).
The team discussed some general prioritization of planning activities to support the upcoming PI (the next sprint was designated as an IP).
The flow of the meeting aimed to provide a comprehensive review of all team activities, aiming to afford all team members an opportunity to review their work.
Did not get a sense of the overarching backlog for the team. How is work prioritized across team members? Right now, it seems like each team member is POC over their own siloed backlog. What are the inter-relationships between work items and the overarching HCD vision/objectives?
Opportunities:
Meeting activities could be more intentional. The flow/approach to the meeting was more “status” centric rather than used for targeted and detailed refinement of the backlog. The emphasis on providing a comprehensive view of what the team is working on/needs to do, limits the ability to complete a detailed review of a set number of features. This is effectively increasing batch size and reducing throughput for backlog refinement.
Feature/Stories for discussion need to be identified in advance and may need to be only a subset of the total backlog. Start less, and accomplish more for the meetings.
Due to limitations on time vs the volume of items being discussed in the meeting, the team was not able to go into a very detailed review of story writing, acceptance criteria, and sizing.
Sizing did not seem to be a standardized/collective effort. Sizing seemed to be at each team member's discretion for their own items. This may be a team nuance/dynamic, however, if that is the case it may need to be noted/reflected in how velocity/throughput is calculated and communicated to stakeholders. This may make longer-range backlog forecasting more complicated and variable.
The team referenced an upcoming PI Planning event, but the feature refinement ceremony did not seem to maximize the allocated time in preparing and prioritizing features for the upcoming PI. More time can be focused on planning vs statusing to expedite readiness for PI Planning.
Iteration Retrospective
Foundation
Timebox: (1-2) hours at the end of the iteration
Purpose: Provides Agile teamthe opportunity to reflect on the committed sprint and look for opportunities for continuous improvement, and cross-functionality. What is working well, any obstacles, and action items in user stories for the next sprint.
Attendees – SM and Team. PO is optional
Facilitator: SM
Preparation: Cadence has been scheduled and Retro Board shared with the team in advance.
Meeting Flow
Each Agile team member is transparent about the below questions:
What went well during this iteration that the team should continue doing
What can be improved?
What are any obstacles?
Scrum Master helps the team in discovery – not provide answers
Recommended Practices
Did the meeting start on time
Did all the Agile Team attend the Retrospective
Did team members feel safe?
Retro board created and visible for the team
Action items created as user stories for the next sprint
Were the team members actively engage
Did the meeting end on time
The team is proud of their accomplishments and can celebrate