Do you think tasking would help reduce the creation of knowledge silos?
Would it help developers rotate stories/tasks easily?
Suggested Solution:
Tasking done effectively, would help share the knowledge within the team. I’ve worked with teams that tasked their stories during sprint planning. Even though the sprint planning meeting took 2-3 hours for a 5-6 member team, it was very useful in knowledge sharing:
- Every team member contributes to every story’s approach.
- Design decisions are discussed.
- Tasks include automation and testing. That irons out the testing approach for every story.
- Dependencies are discussed in detail.
- Risks and alternate approaches are arrived at.
During the sprint, the familiarity increases the confidence and hence team members are comfortable picking any task. Story swarming becomes very effective.
Also, if the teams practice pair programing, frequent pair rotation is easier.
2 Responses
Velocity of each individual iteration will be a different figure. There are many ways velocity gets impacted. Apart from planned absence (planned leave, training etc.) and holidays, there could be unplanned absences caused by illness, personal emergency etc. which impact velocity. User stories that do not get completed in an iteration get moved to next iteration. This brings down the velocity of the iteration where the story was started and bumps up the velocity of the iteration where it got completed. This being the situation, good practice is to take an average of last five or six iterations as the velocity of the team. Team stability is another factor that impacts velocity. Teams that have higher churn will see higher volatility in velocity. Other factors such as change in technology, adoption of new tools, increase in automation, will also impact velocity either positively or negatively! However, if team is stable and has reached “performing stage” steady rise in average velocity will be seen over a period of time till any of the factors mentioned above comes into play and impacts it.
Thanks Milind, fully agree with your comment.
Finally, irrespective of the increasing trend in velocity, there is improvement for sure. This cannot be missed, if observed. One of the intent of my blog is to encourage this observation, by taking a mildly provocative stand.