[teampractices] Scrum-y tools based on BZ (was Re: Scrumbu.gs)

[Tomasz Finc]

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 1) Instead of Scrum, some teams at Mozilla use Kanban (less focus on
> velocity, roles, rituals; more focus on just tracking ongoing work and
> limiting work-in-progress). This is more comparable to the lightweight
> workflow that e.g. the Mobile App teams and Growth teams at WMF are
> currently using, though I'm not sure we've ever formally implemented
> some aspects of Kanban on these teams like WIP limits and lead time
> estimation - perhaps Steven or Tomasz can speak to that. My take is
> that  Kanban is good for small teams and Scrum's benefits kick in on
> larger, more complex projects.

The App team is starting to see the breaking points of Trello as we
use story points and track velocity. We've overloaded the title
description to have story points and were using a chrome extension to
better visualize it [1]. Velocity tracking is done manually using a
spreadsheet which is a pain.

It's not enough for us to move from Trello -> Mingle yet but all the
issues I'm running into are standard features of Mingle making it an
attractive change in the future.

I think of project management tools as one component of a toolbox and
this toolbox has a finite amount of space. If were adding new tools
then we should get rid of old ones to reduce our maintenance and
knowledge burden. This was we can collectively enjoy and improve new
tools. The more that we add, the harder it gets for any one person to
move between teams quickly.

--tomasz

[1] - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrum-for-trello/jdbcdblgjdpmfninkoogcfpnkjmndgje?hl=en