One of the topics suggested by the audience was addressing the problem of stories not completing during a sprint during a panel discussion in which I participated. The majority of the audience were using Scrum or Scrumban approaches to developing and maintaining software. Attendees provided several situations to add context to their topic request. Boiling down the stories they provided yields three usual suspects that are the bane of teams everywhere.
- Teams taking on more work than they can complete in a specific timebox. Teams commit to more work than they can complete for many reasons including stakeholders pushing work into the team during planning, a “yes” culture, and acting without planning or refinement.
- Teams not having control of their work entry process after a sprint starts. Work entry is a common problem that includes porous boundaries, yes culture issues and hybrid development-maintenance teams.
- Work hitting roadblocks before being shippable. This category includes issues such as black swans (unpredictable situations — very rare) and predictable situations that were not considered. Self-inflicted roadblocks are generally failures to understand the workflow, leadership, or planning problems.
One of the solutions we discussed was to move to a continuous flow approach for working rather than a sprint/iteration based approach. While I am often a proponent of this sort of approach, it is not the solution to any of the three “stuff doesn’t get done when promised” scenarios. Radically changing approach (moving from a Scrum mindset to a Kanban mindset) before addressing these three underlying issues is tantamount to trying to grab a spoon out of running garbage disposal – scary, dangerous, and messy. A team that chronically does not complete its work items is a big problem. Teams in this situation will develop strained relations with stakeholders and are not trusted to deliver. Knee jerk reactions almost never address the root cause of the problem and postpone the reckoning that always happens. Many coaches refer to taking the easy way out as not adopting an agile mindset, I would rather call it like it is, a slow-motion train wreck leading to the failure of agile and a waste of time and money.
