Agile Development Sprints – This is how we do it
Posted in Agile Development, Ruby on Rails, Tips and Tricks
In any given week our company is typically developing five projects at once, with teams of one to three. We run one-week sprints with a half day planning session on Monday morning, and a review session on Friday afternoon.
A sprint is the basic unit of development in Agile. Sprints tend to last between one week and one month and are a “timeboxed” development effort of a constant length.
Our sprint planning session is broken down as follows:
- Product owner – prioritise and explain highest priority items in the product backlog (we use Pivotal Tracker). The team can ask questions at this point.
- Product owner – set a sprint goal (what are we achieving this sprint).
- Team – select Pivotal Tracker stories you can commit to, to attain that goal.
- Team – demonstrate a solution to each story in the sprint and ensure no outstanding questions.
Our Friday afternoon review session:
- Product Owner and Team - demo all completed stories.
- Team – Review estimates from the sprint and note down how you went and how you can improve (if target not met).
- Team – Review points missed from the sprint and why, and how you can improve on that for next sprint.
If you’re running sprints in your organisation do you do things a little differently? Drop us a line in the comments.