A scrum for the mixed front-end team?
Posted by Jesse Rodgers on June 28, 2008 at 11:27 AM
This past week the front-end team that I lead (it includes GUI makers, User Advocates, and UI folks) along with the rest of the team (SOA enablers) are religiously entering a scrum cycle for the remainder of the summer. We have broken into two groups along the lines already mentioned.
The problem I am having is that my group is a mix of the pigs and chickens and I am not entirely sure how to have them all involved. My approach for the moment is to have the UA/UI folks participate as observers in the first 15 min daily with the UI folks really taking the time to go over their tasks from yesterday, for today, and tomorrow. They leave, then the UA/UI folks do their thing for 15 min.
The other challenge as I see it is that we can’t ‘lock in’ tasks for a two week period as the expectation is that clients are giving feedback and expect to see some adjustments on a very short cycle. To address that I have set up two days of ‘respond to feedback’ where we tackle any tasks that can be done in those two days. Anything that can’t fit goes on the list for the next cycle.
This is going to be a bit awkward at first I think… not entirely sure I have it organized properly yet. Hopefully by the next two week cycle I will get it ;) Wondering though, anyone have a similar problem? How do they handle front end development of web applications in a scrum cycle?
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Hey Jessie,
Interesting, you have exactly the opposite problem to most agile teams that often struggle to get customer feedback. In some ways this a a good problem to have.
While your strategy sounds like it could work, here are some other things to consider …
Perhaps you could try not “locking-in” the tasks for a two week sprint. Other agile methodologies, like XP, allow the customer to change/add/delete stories during the iteration.
Reduce the sprint length. I actually prefer a shorter sprint of a week anyway. If your customer could accept a 1 week response then maybe that would be sufficient feedback responsiveness. I have heard of teams actually doing 2 day sprints!
Also Jeff Patton has some very sound advice on user interaction design and agile and you may find some insight on his web site: http://agileproductdesign.com/blog/emerging_best_agile_ux_practice.html
Hope this helps,
Declan
Jessie,
Also, there are some Yahoo groups that might help. There are some excellent responders at:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-usability/
Cheers,
Declan
@Declan thanks—all that helped ;) I really need to find some time to focus on a day or two of research.
We are trying shorter sprint periods, see how it goes. Two-three days would actually be ideal for the front-end team I think.
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