#15 Personal Backlogs

Symptom: The team work individually on a number of user stories in a sprint rather than work as a group to tackle user stories by priority. This is often given the excuse that there is no work to do for some team members and so to keep everyone busy more user stories are started. This often results in lots of work in progress and no closure of stories at the end of the sprint with a reduced velocity.

Probable Cause: The team are probably still thinking in silos and that only certain skill sets can work on a story at a given time.

Suggested Resolution: Try to ensure that the team are familiar with the objectives of the sprint - to complete user stories, and that half done does not equal completion. How the team rally to close stories is not so important, only the delivery of high quality software at the end of the sprint is of high value.

To try to dissolve the silos try using pair programming techniques from extreme programming. You can also expand these to include pair testing, pair unit test design, and anything else that will bring the collaborative working within the team to life.

Gently educating the team that it is ok to cross the silo boundaries and that they do not have to work on stories alone should help the team to learn to tackle stories as prioritised objectives rather than as units of work, and ultimately improve the rhythm and velocity of future sprints.


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