Sprint Day 1 – Here we GO!

We officially kick off our first Sprint today, with our first Daily Scrum.

Okay, “officially” the Sprint started Monday with our first Sprint Planning Meeting, but given we’re getting up to speed with Scrum, with Scrum for TFS, on a new project, team members working together on the same project for the first time and a new Product Owner, I decided that the Sprint start’s “officially” today. “Art of the Possible” and all that… ;)

The Sprint will run for 32 calendar days. Wednesday through to a Friday. That seems to have a nice symmetry to it, ending on a Friday…

I saw for the first time in print this weekend that a Sprint should be “30 calendar days” (Agile Software Development with SCRUM (Series in Agile Software Development) which I spent that last weekend reading… Now that’s a Father’s Day, reading a Scrum book… And actually it WAS good. Man I need a life…LOL). Before seeing that it was unclear to me if 30 days = 30 Calendar OR 30 Business days. I think, given what little I know about Scrum, there could be a case for either one. Now, in hindsight, I think 30 calendar days is “right.” Business days would stretch our the delivery schedule to 6-7 weeks, and that goes against the Zen of Scrum. Small bites of code, quickly delivered, with a business “reset” option about once a month or so. 6-7+ weeks is just too long. Calendar days it is…

To help keep us focused on completing the Sprint I’m going to schedule the Sprint Review Meeting with the Process Owner (PO), Stakeholders, Dev Management, etc for the Monday following the end of the Sprint. Yeah, kind of scary, isn’t it? Talk about incentive to complete the Sprint on time!

 

I’m hoping I can squeeze out three sprints on this project before moving the team to another, even higher priority and risky project. I’ve been talking with the PO and he agrees with me, but we’re somewhat small fish and if we get pushed hard, there’s not much we can do…

Still, we’re driving forward and I’m already starting to feel… something… I think it’s called “good.” Yes, I’m almost sure I feel… “good”. Wow, what a cool feeling… :)

I dig this change to our development process (As if you couldn’t tell). We now have a recipe to help us management our process, we have support, tools and the desire to make it work. And best of all, our new PO is VERY happy about what he’s seen so far. Dev was always a black box to him and his team and now he’s feeling the power, he’s seeing the process, he’s jazzed about the short interaction cycle and is excited about it all. That SO rocks.

 

It was interesting to see us take 7 Product Backlog Items and turn them into Sprint Backlog Items. We went from “gee, this is easy… we’ll finish this in a week” to “OMG, that’s allot of work!” LOL. I kept saying that that’s expected, that the Sprint Backlog will be changing (by the Team only of course! ;) and through our Daily Scrums, we’ll be able to reset if need be… That we’ve got enough to get started and we’ll tweak it as we go, as we need to.

At the end of the day, as the Team worked through the Sprint Backlog Items, agreeing to the owners and setting estimated time I could feel them come out of their shells and start to become a true Team. It’s still going to take more time, more “lets see if Greg walks the walk” proof, but I can already feel a tingle in the air. I almost hated having to leave for the day… 

 

The Sprint Burndown Chart is now up on our corkboard and we’re just a few minutes away from my first Daily Scrum…

Here we go!  Wish me luck. :)