With all the planning and estimations done, it can still be challenging to achieve the sprint goals. This is more so when the team is working on short sprints, as two weeks. Continuous sprints can build up backlog due to spill overs, testing defects and it is possible that teams would start to fail on commitments for the sprint. There could be other project activities that could come up in between to divert their time to work on the stories. In order to avoid this pit fall, it is a good idea to take the development completion date from the developers at the time of sprint planning. This will become an individual commitment from each person and they would be obliged to do everything to keep it.

The development completion date could be added to the sprint board and tracked in the daily stand-up to assess if the team members are in line for completion on the target date.

Though this may seem a light matter, its significance is great. Recently, I have been part of an Agile team who were doing the sprint planning right with the product owner, scrum master and team involved. The stories were assigned to individual developers and all agreed to complete the stories for the sprint and all were conveyed as to be on track but near to the sprint end date the developers showed signs of not completing it sighting trivial reasons. By the end of sprint five, out of the ten sprints that were planned, the backlog due to spill overs had increased by thirty percent. Having joined the team around the mid of sprint four, I realized the mistake they were committing as a team. While the product knowledge, experience and team were in place. There were no individual commitments made by the team, they were verbally agreeing to do it but easily letting it to spill over for varying reasons. I spoke to the product owner and scrum master separately and told them the importance of team giving their commitments and taking responsibility for the stories, within a day of being assigned. I had the planned development completion date added to the sprint board. As with any changes, there was a lot of reluctance for the next two sprints by the team to commit a date as they realized they would be now responsible to keep their commitment. However, they started to see the importance on making these commitments and it became part of the process and it also helped team to manage their time in such a way as to ensure they were completing their tasks for the sprint. This has led to a more predictable outcome and achieving a nearer actual to the plan.

Having a defined finish line always helps to focus on the set goal. As in a actual sprint run, the runner has his focus on the finishing line and perseveres to reach it on time so does the task completion date help to define the individual finish line for each person working on the task, rather than having to leave it open for all of them in the team focusing on the sprint end date and falling short of meeting it due to other unforeseen priorities that creeped in. It gives them a clear focus to the actual expectation from them for the current sprint. It also helps them to set their priorities and gives transparency among the team on the expectations from each member in the team. Individual commitments are key factor in Agile teams, by allowing teams to set their task completion dates we make a provision for teams to define their commitments for themselves and set their goals for the sprint.

 

Ajoy George is a Project Manager with Wipro Limited, having 14 years experience in IT, over 5 years of experience in project management.  He has worked in projects in automobile and airline domains. He resides with his family in South India. His other hobbies include reading, writing and music.

 

Note and Disclaimer: The author of this Blog post is Ajoy George. He is the guest author of PMI.hu. The writing reflects the author's own professional opinion, findings, and conclusions, which do not necessarily agree with the position of PMI Budapest, Hungarian Chapter, and cannot be considered as an official recommendation, resolution, or opinion of PMI Budapest. The copyright and publication rights of the writing belong to the original author.