Rohit is managing a team that has newly transitioned to agile for the past few months. Over these months, across multiple sprints – the team has been regularly preparing stories for sprints. As part of sprint planning – they estimate stories using story points and track velocity.
The product owner has changes that need to get done and has reached out to Rohit to work with the team and prepare a plan on when they are likely to get done. The team refuses to provide details – as they are agile and will not be able to plan ahead. They also point out that stories are not ready and hence they will not be able to estimate. They are clear in the view that the product owner has provided details that are at a very high level – with some very basic acceptance criteria.
Rohit and the product owner are at a loss on what to do. They have thought about doing an initial plan and provide it to stakeholders without involving the team. Rohit has a sense of current velocity of the team based on the sizing they do in each sprint. Should Rohit use that?
What will you advise Rohit to do?
2 Responses
While the solution is simple, its implementation will be tough since the business would not easily sponsor them. While it is a good idea to write all technical debt stories, generally, there will not be any Product Owner who likes to own and accept since the PO comes with business mindset. These kind of work is pushed by external team (not the scrum team). Generally, these is a lack of ownership of these stories and pushed by external teams. I am purposefully, I am not the solution this gap in this comment. Want to hear from others.
I agree Guru. The reason why i mentioned this as a Dilemma for the Engineering manager is do we handle only the low hanging fruits and run with it, or would you work for a harder and more difficult transformation of creation of a working pipeline.
I know one manager I have interacted made the call and felt the next 6 months extremely hard to convince and influence different stakeholders. This is easier to accept while you are doing a transformation.