Choose
- The development team creates a spec.
- The Product Owner says it is.
- The business asks for it.
- There is a test which actually requires it to be there and fails when it is not.
Comment: We often find ourselves lost in the desirements trying to find the real requirements for our system. Those things which seem required often end up being only desired. The word requirement has suffered more from confusion and misuse than just about any other word in the IT lexicon of development. What is a “nice to have” requirement? I mean really! I have close to 20 years of experience in the industry including training and writing requirements. Even with all of that experience the word still makes me a little crazy. I like the word desirement because of it’s contrast with requirement. When there is a test that makes it required with a pass/fail then it is a requirement, until then it’s just a a desirement.
So, a more interesting question is …. When is a requirement truly required?
- You get past work experience. And calculate the amount of work the team can handle
- Get estimates from the team and double the number they give you to determine work load.
- Meet with each individual and see how much work they can take on. Build a sprint plan from that information. Then gather everyone, show the sprint plan and kickoff the team sprint.
- Use the PO/SM powers to challenge the team to take big bites. Get as much loaded in the sprint as possible. The PO/SM can form a powerful pincer to overcome resistance.
- This is sprint planning. You commit one story at a time. Make sure the team is committing to sharp definitions of done.
Comment: After a Story is committed to, the Team (with the PO in the lead) has the option to reprioritize the Story list, and the Team takes the next one to consider. Once again, the Team comes to the “doneness” Agreement and commits to adding the Story to the list of already-committed-to Stories. This process is repeated until the Sprint is “full” and the Sprint Plan is complete.
It is never too large for the sprint. The team must learn how to meet business expectations.- The team cannot agree on which stories to work on during the sprint
- The product owner has prioritized the story into sprint planning without any written definition of done
- When the team cannot agree on how to commit to the story
- Teams are inherently anxious; SM/PO must challenge the team and not accept no for an answer.
- Make the sprint bigger so the story fits.
Comment: The Team may not be able to commit to a story, or might noteven be able to agree on “done.” This makes the story in question is an epic, by definition, and the Team must decide what to do. Typical choices include committing to an Analysis Story to figure out what to do about the epic, or extracting a smaller story from the epic to do instead (putting the remainder back on the backlog), or skipping the story altogether and moving to the next one. Bottom line: We need a sense of movement to understand what the team can and cannot do. Biting off chunks of work that are too large obscures movement and makes throughput / velocity that much harder to understand. Use the team’s ability to commit to understand the work that the story represents.
