Preparing For Sprint One

Like many others, I have used the principles of AgileSoftwareDevelopment for a number of years now. Every time I help set up a new project, I ask myself: What do I need to get into place before I begin the first sprint? (A sprint is a term from the ScrumMethodology which refers to a 2-4 week work period resulting in a fully integrated release.)

Preparing for sprint one will be the theme for the next meeting in DanishAgileUserGroup August 28th at Capgemini in Copenhagen. I want to see if I can assemble some good preparation patterns and maybe get others to contribute.

Feel free to make a contribution. Please state patterns that you have actually tried out yourself and report on your successes (or failures).

-- HenrikThomsen.

I have made some categories to get the ball rolling:

• DoTheAgileAcidTests
• PreparingPeopleForSprintOne
• PreparingTheMethodologyForSprintOne
• PreparingTheWorkspaceForSprintOne?
• PreparingTheOrganizationForSprintOne?
• PreparingTheToolsForSprintOne

At the Copenhagen meeting we did a workshop based on Alistair Cockburn's Reflection workshop: Based on your experiences, what would you keep? What would you try in the next time period? And where did you have ongoing problems? We split the participants into two teams. One team would prepare for kick-off for a newly started project and the other team would convert an existing project into an agile project.

Here are the findings of the two teams:

New project

Keep

• Identify product owner
  • Bring him/her together with team
• Bring the right people together
• Sprint Zero
  • Create Product backlog
  • Create architecture
• Minimum requirements to staff
  • Must be willing to work as a team
• Negotiate engineering practices with team, do not change everything at once
• If someone doesn’t want to work agile style, talk about it, and try to find out why

Try next time

Problems

• Staff doesn’t know agile practises
• Catch 22: Create Product backlog <> Organize Team
• Someone wants to work by themselves

Existing project

Keep

Try next time – motivation based approach

• Establish pilot / demonstration testbed
• Start using short iterations and releases
• Let the team decide on a definition of done
• Create a product backlog with priorities
• Review priorities
• First planning session
• Estimate tasks

Problems

• Introduce the methodology to the team
  • Let the team learn gradually as they go along in an evolutionary style
• Identify product owner
  • Art of the possible – take action

---

CategoryAgileMethodology