Are We Done Yet?
, lisa shoop
Are We Done Yet?
We will play a team game that will enforce that a User Story is not done until it meets the acceptance criteria. If the User Story is not done, you do not earn the points. Teams often want “partial credit” or to say the User Story is complete and carry the defects over. We will then have a retrospective of what we learned.
We had lots of fun at Agile 2007 and look forward to Agile 2008
Practices the game supports • Time boxing – each builder has the same amount of time to build
• What is done? - The builder doesn’t get points for incomplete structures
• Points – each card has a point value assigned by difficulty to build
• Velocity – the variance of each team builder’s expertise can affect the velocity
• Team work – the velocity should increase if the team works together versus competing - Discussion about in the real world they may build more than one card (User Story) at a time in an iteration - so this game illustrated “personal” velocity rolled up to “team velocity”
• Business Value – the value isn’t specified on the cards but the value is implied in that the business has provided the order in which to work the backlog. The builders have to work in the order in which they draw the cards from the deck. In round 3, they can choose the order
• Team QA – The team determines if the structure matches the card
It is a fun game and a simple way to reinforce what “done” is
After the game is played, a retrospective is held to facilitate sharing of lessons learned and how they could be applied in real life.