[maemo-community] Sprint process (was: Re: May 2009 sprint meeting)

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 07:33, Andrew Flegg<andrew at bleb.org> wrote:
> 2009/5/7 Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com>:
>>
>> Proposal: no more than 3 tasks per person in a single sprint:
>>
>> - 1 MUST at most.
>> - 1 SHOULD at most.
>> - 1 COULD at most.
>>
>> If someone is done after 2 weeks he can help another tasks strucggling
>> in the sprint. And there is always a backlog to keep you going.
>>
>> Not coompleting more than 50% of a committed sprint doesn't feel good,
>> and it's like this almost every month.
>
> Yup. Any feedback from the maemo.org staff members, now that this has
> had a while to sink in?

Some feedback I've received, pulling this back to the list:

  * Perhaps there's reticence to comment on the basis the existing process
    isn't working well, and people don't want to suggest things and be
    told "well, you can talk".

  * Perhaps the process is working fine for some people.

  * The process is getting really complicated. Tying together an agenda;
    (say, a series of task URLs); having the planning meeting (which
    mostly seems to consist of listing tasks, rather than getting into the
    meat of our priorities); maintaining a wiki page for status;
    maintaining the task page; suggestions of tmo threads etc.

  * tmo - despite growing in importance - isn't necessarily great as a
    general reporting solution, as it becomes too easy to get distracted
    from the task in hand on every other random thread.

  * Task updates shouldn't need to be given *during* the meeting, a
    summary can be disseminated before hand and - ideally - the status
    reporting mechanism would be up-to-date.

  * Task proposals could be submitted *before* the meeting, and the
    meeting is basically agreeing priorities.

  * People should ensure that they don't have tasks committed which
    prevent them from doing "ongoing" work (such as responding to issues
    or helping users).

  * Intermediate deadlines might help (although if - say - it was 50%
    of the tasks which weren't finished on the 4 week deadline last time,
    an intermediate deadline might make things worse; in the short term
    at least).

  * Buy-in of task owners is still crucial.

  * Mer uses a homegrown task-tracking system which is apparently working
    well. Stskeeps says it was trivial to write.

  * Regularly scheduled sprint meetings at a fixed time could help people
    manage deadlines. Say the first Tuesday of the month, at 13:30 UTC.

I know we're late, but I think that we're making some progress here -
and I don't want to have another sprint (meeting) which feels so
unsatisfying.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
Maemo Community Council chair