Is it nice to work with multiple stories at once?

Question

In a scrum team, how important is it to complete one story before moving on?

Our scrum master is quite dogmatic about bringing one story to completion before moving on. I see that in this scenario the development will be more “controlled”, and the scrum master will have a very accurate idea of ​​what the team members were working on at any given time ... but I'm interested in what we really buy?

Obviously, the scrum master wants to minimize the discrepancy between burning out from reality in order to avoid the shock that ends with the sprint - but, of course, if the sprint lasts two weeks, then the burning is updated sequentially and the blockers are transmitted in the racks - any such divergence will be limited by the length of the sprint, and a visible average sprint will be made on the usual channels (i.e. stand or speak with the scrum master separately). Any remaining issues may be dealt with in a two-week retrospective.

The reason for the question is that I seem to think that I am working most efficiently, while preserving 2 (or 3, if one of them is very simple) stories at any time that I work on, as far as I consider necessary. This seems to help with a subconscious background that helps with completing the task. It also allows me to better understand the big picture when it comes to several stories.

Our stories usually work for one or two days.

So, working on several stories at the time, frowning, and if so, what do you buy once a day?

Answer 1

I think it really depends on the team. I think you got into it to write about burnout, the most important thing is to consistently fulfill your sprint obligations. how this happens should really be up to the team if they are truly self-governing. im on now team, our norm is to work on several stories at once; its nature of our attitude, given that we are trying to truly spread responsibility for the stories in the team. it may be different for you if you have shorter stories and a more individual style of ownership.

Answer 2

I personally think that one story works well at a time because it focuses on the task. The cost of context switching between multiple stories can be high. This is a personal preference for me, but different people work differently. Although I think your scrum master is correct in your methodology, if you find very good reasons for several stories at a time and can demonstrate that it actually helps progress, that would be a good thing.

Answer 3

IMO, here is the main question. Sometimes, when you are working on a story, I need something from another department / team, for example. on-demand clarification or graphic for the page, which means that I will not finish one story before moving on to another story. Although you talk about this when discussing blockers at startup, it can happen when someone from outside helps me finish the story, so there may be several on my plate. That way I can have several stories because of blocking something and still wanting to be productive.

In general, I don't like trying to manage multiple copies of the code base or switch my code, so I prefer to do one story at a time, avoiding blockers. The size of the code base I'm working with is ~ 1.1 GB of data distributed over 82,000+ files, so having multiple copies can be more than painful than I expect.

My personal guess is that the team should set the standard and see that it works for them. If some people like one story at a time, while others do a few, and all is well, cool. If everyone likes to have multiple stories at different points of completion, this can work too.

Answer 4

Do not accumulate a lag ... In my experience, when stories have a size of 1 to 2 days, they are usually implemented by one developer. If you work simultaneously with two or three stories, this can reduce the number of things in the lag that other developers can choose and put the sprint at risk.

... but a blocking plan On the other hand, working with two or three stories at once means that if you are momentarily locked in one story, you can be immediately productive with another. I find that some overhead every time I start a new story. These overheads make it difficult to fill the hourly “gap” on my day with a new story, while it’s much easier to switch to the plot that I have already started.

On the bottom line, let the team decide ... and then review the results during a flashback . If your stories, tasks, and workflow support an environment in which team members can work 2 (maybe 3) stories at a time without sacrificing performance or predictability, then your SM should respect that. But at the same time, you should honestly review the results during each retrospective and be prepared to change if SM does not think that it works.

Answer 5

I usually think that the decision on how to work best should be made exclusively by the team. The role of ScrumMaster is to help and support the team, and not to question the team way of working during the sprint.

To be fair, it can sometimes be a good idea for ScrumMaster to point out potential weaknesses or risks - which will fall into the category of help and support. Being dogmatic about your personal idea of ​​how a sprint should look like internally is not what I would like ScrumMaster to do. This sounds a bit like a misunderstanding of the role of the manager role, which is simply not the case.

How we do it: we almost always work on several stories at once. At the moment, we have a team with four faces with three developers and one tester, and we almost always have at least two or three stories at a time. In the last sprint, we tried to start with all the stories at an early stage in the sprint to get to the point where we have a basic design and a good idea about possible problems. Of course, after that we did not work on all the stories.

I understand that from the point of view of risk management, you can make sure that everything is done for one story before you do the next. However, the disadvantage is that when you encounter unforeseen problems, you may not have time to fix them. Usually problems show their ugly faces at the implementation stage and quite often quite early. So, you basically exchange one risk for another.

What risks are easier to deal with a team. This is their sprint after all, and although I believe it is entirely true that ScrumMaster mentions how the sprint happens, it should not make him think about how to work better in a team.

In the end, I think it comes down to these two things:

• YES, we are working on several stories at once and it has turned out fine so far.

• Remember that ScrumMaster is work for the team and not another way around.

Please note that I mainly say that the whole team is working on several stories at the same time, and not with one developer. The problem I see is that you need to make sure that you are not blocking any stories without opening them so that no one can continue working. Once again, it is a matter of circumstances and preferences. When it comes to testing, our tester often has several testing tasks for different stories, so he can easily switch to another task if some kind of error blocks him from continuing to test the function.