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I am not sure when you would break story into stories or into tasks.
Let's say you have a story that talks about bringing down a service, and to do that you have to analyze and depreciate 5 api where each one takes one week
How would you do that ?
1) break story into 5 stories and this way every story is less than a sprint and can be owned by someone (but cant be demoed)
2) break a story into tasks but then multiple people is working on a single story and one story is lasting more than sprint
Other?
Thank you
Let's say you have a story that talks about bringing down a service
Why are you doing that? Who is going to benefit from it?
That information will help you to create the story associated with the work item.
As a [person that benefits from this work] I want the service brought down so that [reason]
Now, once you have defined the user story you can then add sub-tasks to it that describe how the work will be done. e.g.
Sub-task1 = deprecate API X
Sub-task2 = deprecate API Y
From my point of view, the so-called story should be an epic. The epic should be split in multiple stories, each one tackling the decommissioning of a different service.
It is also equally important to split the stories into sub-tasks because you will most probably identify "hidden flaws". It will also allow you to bring more transparency in the process of completing the story. If the stories are similar from the tasking perspective, you can define the first one as a template for the other ones.
You can view this topic from a different perspective: your purpose is to remove some services that hinder your progress. After you put down one service, you are closer to the desired outcome of taking all the services down. And of course, after each decommissioned server you bring more value for you, your team, or the customer.
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In a user story mapping session, we should start by Identifying the different user types, then their goals or outcomes (represented on the map as activities), and the goals or outcomes of the company (represented on the map as versions or releases).
So for me it makes sense to try to deduct backbone tasks from user activities.
But in his book, Jeff Patton has an example (Everyday life) where he does the opposite, he first list all the tasks, then group them by higher goals or Activities.
So I am confused. From top goals to tasks, or from tasks to top goals ?
From top goals to tasks if you want to deliver fast.
Doing "As an HR manager I want to see turnover reports so I can better focus staff retention initiatives" first instead of starting with (e.g) a "Build CI/CD pipeline" task is the way to go.
That's because it eliminates waste and invites iterative problem solving: "At a minimum, what do we need for continuous integration/development so the HR manager can get her report?" is a great starting point. Go live on production with that, than beef up CI/CD as needed for the next story.
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I am new to Scrum and I am trying to use it for website support and maintenance.
For website support and maintenance, we often receive small tasks, for example: replace a banner on homepage, change phone number on contact page, remove image xyz on article 123, etc... I don't know how to deal with these small tasks in Scrum.
At the moment, I create a single task in backlog, and a single Sprint for each task. Then, execute each task individually. Am I right?
In Scrum we have fixed length, repeating sprints. We bring work to the sprint, rather than creating sprints from tasks.
This is useful for a number of reasons, including:
After a while we get to know the capacity of a sprint.
We know at the start of the sprint what we will be doing and there is no change to the sprint goal during the sprint. This stability helps the team get organised.
The regular cadence helps the team get into a rhythm of planning, executing and then adapting.
Scrum isn't as effective if:
You don't have a team of 3-9 people
Work items and priorities change frequently and stable sprints are not possible
From your description, I wonder if Scrum is the best agile framework for your team.
Perhaps you might consider using Kanban?
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This may be a weird question and please bear with me, I am completely new into this.
I have a list of 20 requirements (use cases) which I received from my client. With him, I prioritized this list of requirements (1 highest 3 lowest). I wrote for every requirement a use case scenario (rather than user story). I also have a use case diagram and some technical designs (class diagram, database diagram).
Now, my plan is to separate this list of 20 requirements into 5 sprints. Each sprint lasts one week.
During every meeting with my client, I can show the product with 4 new use cases implemented. If one of them isn't finished, I move it to the next sprint and my client can request a change during this meeting. During this change, the specific use case diagram and classdiagram/database diagram may be changed.
Is this considered to be Agile? (Even though he gave me the full 20 requirements from the start of the project)
Agile is sort of a big tent, but I would not apply that label to the process you've described. You are describing lots of upfront design work and a full specs up front. The schedule assumes all the req take the same amount of time to implement, thought you acknowledge that it could slip.
The primary agile feature I see is the tight (weekly) feedback loop with client.
I recommend trying on http://pm.stackexchange.com.
This is not considered as Scrum:
- Schedule is prefixed (5 sprints).
- Velocity is prefixed (4 use cases/sprint).
- No scrum ceremony is followed as such.
- All requirements are given upfront.
Please refer - https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles
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Are user stories (typically used in agile development or test driven development) the same thing as events in Edward Yourdon's structured analysis methodology?
Events and user stories are related but not identical. A Yourdon event is any stimulus to the system that requires the system to respond, so, for example, a tick from an external clock could be an event. That might require a response, eg, by incrementing a counter, but it wouldn't necessarily lead to a result with direct business value to the customer, so wouldn't be a valid user story or use case.
A user story is a pattern for briefly describing a business, technical or other type of need.
For example:
As a risk analyst I would like to add references to the application page so that we can store the references with the application, where the verifications team can then use them to help improve our risk rate in our underwriting.
Then in your user story you would decompose the story describing what tasks will be needed to complete the "would like" with a "done" check point being the "so that".
Mike Cohn has a good article on User Stories and the advantage of them http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/27-advantages-of-user-stories-for-requirements
As far as Edward Yourdon's structured analysis methodology, I have to admit I'm not extremely familiar with it so I cant answer that part of your question.
That´s right, user stories and use cases from UML are rewrites of Yourdon´s events. They are just a reinvention of the wheel.
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Most Scrum teams have some sort of whiteboard or other board upon which the stories/tasks for the current sprint are visualized.
I'm curious as to how people organize this board? Do you use post-it notes? Are they color-coded? How do you group tasks? How do you distinguish the state of tasks? Etc...
I've seen groups use a whiteboard, and use different colors for each group of tasks.
If you use note cards for your stories, you can put them up there as well, and divide them by release/iteration/group of tasks. This concept is explained better here.
Update: I also use spreadsheets to visualize my sprints/iterations, because my team is not all co-located. I use tables and graphs similar to what was mentioned in Jim's answer.
Not for everyone, but for those running TFS, Scrum For Team System provides excellent sprint backlog reports.
Failing that, Ive personally maintained sprint backlogs using a spreadsheet, as per this article. Sharing via something along the lines of google docs.
Somewhere on the web there is a blog post which is just a lot of scrum boards. It is really good to see how other people do it. Maybe someone can find it for us :)
I think this looks like a pretty comprehensive way of doing things!
http://www.xpday.net/Xpday2007/session/AgileInGovernment.html
Check out the Rally tool at rallydev.com.
Depending on your needs, there is a free community edition. It's very easy to track stories and tasks within a given sprint, including estimations, actuals, and states for each story and task.
I usually use an Excel sheet, on a shared network folder: one column is used to specify the "group" of the task, and one to specify the task itself. For completed tasks, we simply mark the row in green. The primary disadvantage for that is sharing - I've yet to find a decent solution that allows more than one person to edit the backlog. We have some ways to deal with it (by limiting the updates to a specific time of day, and then having the team update it together), but it is still annoying.
For sprints with a small number of tasks, we simply write the tasks on a whiteboard, and strike over the tasks as they are completed.