[teampractices] How do teams track work not related to goals?

[David Strine]

Ah thanks for the clarification.

FR-tech handles this in backlog grooming. We have tried to maintain 3
sprints pre-assembled ahead and an extra "Q1" column for all the other
stray ideas.

The product owner tries to map out our quarterly goals per sprint and set a
goal or theme for each sprint. The whole team then promotes new work or
debates the rest of the tasks.

This also gets debated once more in sprint planning. It ensures we are all
on the same page for the sprint.



On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 10:36 AM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Thanks for the quick replies.
>
> When I said "tracking", I really meant "ensuring it doesn't get dropped".
> That is, with everyone having a laser focus on work related to quarterly
> goals, does your process also encourage work on other important stuff? I
> wasn't thinking of graphs reports on this type of work.
>
> For VE, it sounds like important non-goal tasks get prioritized in the
> appropriate tranche. Is it an "interrupt" if you knew at the start of the
> quarter that you would have to do it?
>
>
>
> Kevin Smith
> Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 10:05 AM, David Strine <dstrine at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> I'll ask a more complicated question. Does it matter? If you think your
>> goals are being affected my other work, then it's probably worth testing.
>> If not, then it might not be a productive use of your time.
>>
>> We've had several conversations about tracking types of work. I believe
>> it is more accurate and efficient to start with broad categories and slowly
>> delve deeper. Also you need to strike a balance between tracking a lot of
>> variables and not driving your team crazy with record keeping.
>>
>> Fr-tech is tracking unplanned work to start. We are 8 weeks in (4
>> sprints). We're only now getting patterns.
>>
>> In general, objective and empirical data should speak for itself. If you
>> go into some investigation or analysis with a preconceived notions, then
>> you need to try and disprove your idea (think null hypothesis). Otherwise
>> you're running into selection and confirmation bias.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 9:43 AM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Within the foundation, each team identifies one or a handful of
>>> quarterly goals, which become the focus of the team. However, there is
>>> always going to be important work that doesn't fit into a goal. Either
>>> there were already too many goals in place, or there is one main goal but
>>> 10 ongoing projects, or maybe this other work is too small to justify being
>>> a goal, but too important to let slip.
>>>
>>> So the question I was asked was: How do other teams track these non-goal
>>> important work items? Obviously the tasks themselves can be tracked in
>>> phab, but do they get rolled up anywhere? How do teams ensure that they
>>> continue to be worked on, despite not being one of the main goals?
>>>
>>>
>>> Kevin Smith
>>> Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation
>>>
>>>
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>>
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