Product backlog - do you really need an app for that?

Some time ago I encouraged you to put your sprint backlog on the wall because of transparency and efficiency. Today I want to ask you to go even further and put your backlog on the wall (or whiteboard if you want). The whole product backlog? Yes - the whole product backlog - with each story that belongs to it.

And the great question is: But why? Let's see.

It’s just a waste

Estimation was an ongoing issue that I and my team were struggling with at my last company. Of course there were better sprints, but there were also ones with totally inaccurate estimation. Everything was either over- or underestimated.

As a Scrum Master, who was assisted by a great team, I tried to improve it in many various ways and... when I changed a job, there were still issues with estimation itself. But, after a closer look, I need to admit that all battles against wrong numbers standing next to “to-be-done” tasks were worth fighting for. We improved a number of things: our Sprint Plannings, Retrospectives, writing User Stories and good Definition of Done. I could list even more things which were improved in times when we gave special attention to estimation.

Are we doing things that needs to be done?

Those from you, who use Scrum in their work knows daily stand-up meetings and three famous questions to ask and answer:

• What did I accomplish yesterday?
• What will I do today?
• What obstacles are impeding my progress?

ladies, wall and sprints

improvements in team in progress

I recetly put our's sprint backlog on the wall. It's more readable, it requires no additional effort to know what is going on and you are always up to date. I wrote more about this here. We are still using reguar tools to manage sprints, but wall is used not for managing purpose, but for visualization. And from what I can see, everyone likes this idea.

The wall was only a first step to increase motivation in team and identification with product, that we are delivering. There are lot more in my head and I will definitely share everything just after I will have any observations.

Recently we startet to do meetings, which main purpose is to know our's customer better, to know what they want to get and to know what we need to beware. I need to admit, that I see many positive aspects of them and after few more meetings I'll describe how it works in our team.

Use your wall

In my current project we're using Jira to track the progress in project, to storing backlog items and so on. And after few years I need to admit that is really great tool, at least is perfect for ours needs.

Ok, it's almost perfect - it's completely unrelated with motivation in our team.
Why I think so? Because we're looking at it only when one of us needs to do something there. Team members moves issues from one column to the other, product owner sorts backlog whenever there is a need, we are adding notes, attachments or we made clarification for the issues and many other things, but all of those are activities related with project life cycle. Not with motivation.

I don't want to work alone anymore

Few months ago we decided to focus more on pair programming. We were doing it from time to time before, but after few conversations with far more experienced people, I spoke with the team and we agreed that it's worth to try doing more pair programming.

If there were so many people, who found pair programming as a one of the greatest technique they have ever experienced, it should be worth to spend some more time to improve it in our Scrum. What bad could happen either way?

After those few months, I can say that was really good idea to invest more time and improve this technique in our team. Right now almost half of our user stories are implemented in pairs and everyone loves it. Why?

Let's improve our Daily Stand-up

I found Scrum as a perfect solution for managing in my current project. Even if at first it was very difficult to implement it and our knowledge and understanding of this framework was poor. Day by day, week by week, sprint by sprint we gained more experience and everything became obvious and natural. We became agile team.

Never postpone meetings

Recently, one of my friends asked me a question:

"What will you do if your's daily stand-up starts at 9:30 and one of your teammates, who went half hour ago to the shop and should already back, is still absent?"

I told him that answer is simple - I will call him and ask how long it will take for him to get back to us. If it won't be long, we will wait for him.

One year after...

one day I became Scrum Master

One year ago, in november, one of my colleague, who was Scrum Master in one of the projects we're working on, decided to move to other city. He need to also change the job, because there was no possibility to work from another city all the time.
So my boss came to me and asked me a simple question - do you want to became a Scrum Master of this project?

What could I say? :)