Agile Anti-Pattern #8: Lucky Dog

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Agile   Scrum   ProjectsAtWork  

It can seem like a good idea to add a backup story into a sprint — if works gets blocked or things turn out easier than expected, another story can be pulled into the sprint. However, having more than one story identified, even if not committed, is likely to lead to less work getting done.

In the first article of this series we introduced the concept of Anti-Patterns in agile project management. In subsequent articles, we have continued to explore the common solutions to problems that Agile teams face — focusing on story points — and why these “fixes” often make things worse. See the links at the end of this article to read the entire series, including translating story points to effort hours, altering history, and relying on an anchor story. Now, in our fifth installment, we turn our attention to planning.

Most teams I have worked with use either a two- or three-week sprint cycle. One of the key tasks for the team is to determine what will get done in each of those iterations. This is usually done as a group, either at the very end of the previous sprint or the very beginning of the new one. It should include as much of the team as possible, and often includes product owners or other interested parties. Each user story is given a value in points, and these stories are added to the sprint until the team says they have no capacity remaining. Seems…

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