Pre-planning, sprint planning, Elaboration sessions

 

• Planning event

• Go through in-flight user stories, check what statuses they are in, whether they can be completed in the current sprint, which ones need to be carried over to the next sprint.

• Daily stand up

• Each associate plans for the current day

• Dependencies if any

• What help is required from the team

• Anything else that needs discussion.

• What bugs are there, why, what happens, etc. etc.

• 2 Catch ups with BAs every week - Backlog refinement (No elaboration sessions)

• Three Amigos

• PO

• Developer

• Tester

• Outcome is a clear understanding of the functionality to be delivered.

• Clear acceptance criteria.

• Documented test scenarios.

• Should happen as soon as a developer picks up a user story from sprint backlog.

• User Story Handover meeting

• Explain what the user story is (after three amigos).

• What acceptance criteria is

• What testing is required

• Any other questions / queries around the functionality.

• User story points

• Sprint review / showcase

• Retro event

What is expected →

SPRINT PLANNING

Planning itself can be split into three activities:

• Pre-planning / backlog grooming

• Who - PO, SM, BA and key team members

• When - mid sprint

• What

• 10 to 15% of time

• Add new epics and user stories

• Extract stories from existing epics (refinement).

• Estimate effort in T-shirt sizing

• PO identifies candidate user stories (based on priority) for the next sprint.

• Team helps PO prioritize / re-prioritize based on tech feasibility.

• Sprint planning

• Who - PO and entire team

• When - beginning of every sprint

• What

• PO and team negotiate on which user stories will be tackled in the sprint

• Time boxed to 2-4 hours

• PO describes highest priority features to the team

• Team may split user stories to tasks

• PO answers questions, clarifies acceptance criteria and may renegotiate.

• Team sizes user story in story points.

• Result is 

• A SPRINT GOAL

• A SPRINT BACKLOG

• Elaboration session

• Who - PO, Developer, Tester

• When - addressed progressively at various points in the sprint.

• What

• Big user stories are progressively broken down into finer user stories and filled up with more details. 

• Elab ensures that unanswered questions are answered.

Behavioural questions -- Kirsty Bonner

• Tell me about a challenging client-facing situation and how you handled it.
• Provide an example of a time when you personally demonstrated ownership.
• Give me an example of a time when you faced a conflict whilst working on a team. How did you handle that?
• Give me an example of a time when you had to challenge a management decision.
• Tell me about a time when you had to quickly adjust your work priorities to meet changing demands.