Monday, October 26, 2009

#3 Working Hard But Not Finishing Within The Iteration

Symptom: Everyone on the team is working hard but at the end of iteration there are only a few stories completed.

Probable Cause: The team may be splitting up the work according to their respective skill set and working on their own personal backlogs of stories rather than as a team on single user stories.

Suggested Resolution: Try to work as a cross functional team on the highest priority stories and do what needs to be done to complete them. This may mean that a team member may have to do work outside of their primary skill set, but as an agile team member, their prime objective should be to complete stories rather than starting other user stories. Working as a group this way to tackle the top stories can reduce the tension of working on something new when compared to working on your own, and also helps to build the team social bonds.

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