What to do when Everything is in progress on your sprint?

Did you encounter the situation when you are almost at the end of the sprint and you are not sure if the sprint goal will be delivered as everything is in progress?
You know, that moment when almost nothing is Done on the board, the burndown chart looks awful, stakeholders are asking you if your team will deliver the sprint commitment but everything is in progress
Yes, this is a common issue when it comes to Scrum teams and tracking sprint progress.
Well to solve this, the first question is: Why is everything in progress?
And you might have one (or a mix) of the following answers:
  • Multiple User Stories in progress from beginning - devs are taking multiple User Stories from the sprint beginning, they are working on small parts which are not testable entirely
  •  Multitasking people – people love multitasking and it is in their nature to do frequent switch of context, starting new User Stories and not finishing them
  •  QAs not in sync with Devs – parts of User Stories are dev completed but meanwhile testers started other user stories
  • User stories are completed but waiting for Product Owner validation - as Definition of Done is not entirely accomplished
  • Dependent user stories – some user stories are dependent on others, the feature is considered Done only when all of them are finished
  • Scope change - there are multiple scope changes and instead of adding new user stories people are modifying the same user stories
  • Urgent user stories which needs to be started immediately – without the negotiation phase, current work is left in progress and new items are started too
  • Board or tool not updated – user stories are Done but the tool or the board is not in sync with the real situation
  • Blocked user stories - User stories set on Blocked and no updates lately
And the list can continue…
Now, what you can do to have a clearer progress of the sprint and to avoid this increased work in progress situation?
Once you have to identify your case and then to coach your team and start working with them to improve the situation. Easy to say...

What you can try is to:
  • Make the progress visible – print the burndown chart, add it to the board and do a highlight        when there is no progress visible. To highlight, there can be a burndown chart interpretation by  colors.
  • Remember the Definition of Done agreement - Print also the DoD to emphasize what the team agreed on what Done mean
  • Coach the team members to work as a team by helping each other to finish items rather than separating them into multiple technologies parts e.g. development and testing
  • Coach the Product Owner to validate the USs once it is dev completed.
  • Limit WIP – add this Kanban element to the board and explain the benefits of workflow, coach the team to avoid multitasking by showing them why multitasking is not efficient
  • Refinement checks – pay attention to the next refinement to avoid dependent user stories
  • Definition of Ready - Planning – pay attention to the sprint plannings to avoid user stories which are not ready to be taken during sprint; work with the team to define a Definition of Ready list
  • When new scope is noticed, coach the Product Owner to add new user stories instead of modifying existing ones
  • Scope Negotiation - if there are scope change situations, coach the team to negotiate the scope by replacing the items from the sprint with the new ones, rather than adding and overloading the sprint
  • Address impediments as early as possible - if some work is blocked the Scrum Master should do everything is possible to remove impediments
  • And last but not least, bring this to Sprint Retrospective - where the team could discuss about the situation and bring their own ideas  around the subject
To sum up, I would say that the most important aspect is to coach the team to change the mindset on focusing together on finishing Product Backlog items rather than starting new ones.

Everyone wants predictable teams, sprint goals accomplished and happy customers. 
Tracking sprint progress and helping the teams to discover better ways of working it is a journey which will lead to this.

What about your sprint? How many user stories do you have in progress?

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment below

Popular posts from this blog

Is your Scrum team dysfunctional?

Image
5 dysfunctions of a team book is a MUST to read for any leader, especially for Scrum Masters. In this article I want to share with you what should you look for before answering if your team is dysfunctional. To give you an overview about the context, 5 dysfunctions of a team model was developed by Patrick Lencioni under a fable where he bolded the dysfunctions simulating real human interactions. Reading the book, I got amazed of the attitude and courage of Kathryn - team's leader, and how she handles different situations with her colleagues. I come over and over to read Patrick Lencioni's book and each time amazes me. Let's take a look over how these 5 dysfunctions would look like and which are the dysfunctional signs that you can find within a team: 1. ABSENCE OF TRUST - Invulnerability The first dysfunction lies at the foundation of a team. It relates to the confidence among members so they get comfortable being vulnerable with one another. Invulnerability can ...
Read more

New Year's Resolutions in an Agile way

Image
When it comes to the new year we think about new resolutions too..new goals, projects, new thoughts and implicitly new work to do. But before you decide to make a New Year’s resolution make sure that you are willing to really put in the work and commit to making a change.  Setting up New Year's Resolution and achieving goals can be done in an Agile Way and b elow you can find some tips that can help you achieving your goals: Start with a retrospective  We can see the new year like a new iteration - a restart moment. You can think about  restarting your practices, habits, your mindset or your attitude. But restarting comes after learning so first , start your year with a retrospective of the last year - start your year with last year's learnings.  Reflect about how things went and think what you would try differently this year.  Stop for a moment to ask yourself: - What do I want to accomplish this year? - How do I want to behave thi...
Read more

Hello July! Summer Retrospective

Image
In a previous article, I wrote about Engaging Retrospectives Now that July is here and feeling the holiday mood from the office I thought it might be a good idea for a thematic retrospective with my team. So I tried the Sailboat format My retrospective went smoothly and the team enjoyed it Below are some benefits that I noticed when using this technique: - It is very simple and does not need preparation, besides drawing of course - Teams like storytelling and this theme gives a nice and relaxing atmosphere - Team bonding, emphasize the idea of sailing together as a team - Can be made independent, does not matter how the sprint went - Can be applied also for projects, not only for sprints - You can discover positive perceptions, which were the impediments or what slowed down the sprint but also what to be avoid - You can see if there are other perceptions for Ideal Destination, as a team How you run it? Keeping the 5 steps structure in mind from Diana Lersen book : ...
Read more