User Stories: Ready, Set, Go!

Bob Galen is the President and Principal Consultant of RGCG, L.L.C. a Cary, N.C.-based agile methods coaching & training consultancy. He is a deeply experienced Agile & Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) who is active in the agile community and regularly writes & teaches on all topics related to the agile methods. Bob has written two agile related books: Scrum Product Ownership, a definitive work surrounding agile product ownership, and Agile Reflections, which is focused toward mature agile patterns. He can be reached at [email protected] and join his mailing list at http://eepurl.com/IAxTD.

  Agile   Scrum  

Have you ever entered a sprint taking on a user story that you later regretted? For example:

• One that you should have broken down a wee bit more?
• One where the team had not a “snowball’s clue” how to technically implement?
• One where the value wasn’t clear from a business perspective?
• One where the estimate and the reality were not equal?
• One that, when you got it “done”, you weren’t quite sure how to determine that it was done?

I’m guessing, of course you have. I encounter these scenes in teams I’m coaching all the time. And truth be told, it’s not a terrible event. Teams make mistakes…all the time. And they usually learn from them.

The real problem, from my perspective, is with the teams that continue to do this sprint over sprint over sprint. Yes, the dynamics slightly change, but the end result is the same. The team is taking on user stories that are truly not ready for the sprint!

So the question is: What can be done to prevent it? Is there a technique that will prevent this from happening, or are these teams doomed to keep repeating their mistakes? I’m glad you asked.

Definition-of-Done
I hope everyone is familiar with the terminology “definition of done” (DoD), or “done-ness”, from an agile methods perspective. It’s …

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