[maemo-community] Sprint meeting & process

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 15:49, Dave Neary<dneary at maemo.org> wrote:
>
> So, I ask again: what are the status reports for? Is it just to make
> sure people are working? To identify problems they're having? To help
> set someone's priorities if they're not working on the "right" thing, or
> not in the right way?

Hmm. I can see status reports being useful for several things
(although I wasn't paying attention to the process when they were
first introduced, so comments from Quim and anyone else paying
attention/involved back then appreciated).

In my day job, some of the biggest benefits have been, in descending order:

  1) Communication on anything which might impact someone else (even
     if its not known by the speaker at the time).

  2) Ability to garner assistance (even without knowing it was needed)
     or feedback on stuff before too much effort on an inefficient
     path is taken.

  3) Manage expectations so that if a task has been committed to, but
     unexpectedly large issues have come up, it's not a surprise at
     the end of the period when it's not complete.

  4) Evidence that an employee is progressing, that work is being done
     and that the timescales match original estimates and
     expectations.

Now, with a smaller, more senior/experienced, workforce the final
point is less relevant.

However, the point behind the first two is important: I've been in a
number of stand-up meetings where somebody's given a brief status
update, and it's either duplicated someone else's work; impacted it or
they have a better idea on how it should be implemented. And this
*wasn't known* by the task owner when they gave the update. This
serendipitous improvement can be very valuable.

Cheers,

Andrew

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