[teampractices] Grooming: ongoing and asynchronous

[Kevin Smith]

Thanks Dan! Can you say more?

In that case, you had a product backlog project that spanned multiple
sub-teams, and had a column for each. Are you saying that the tech leads
would pull items from "To Triage" into their column, and also move items up
and down within their own sub-team column?

Did they communicate what they had done, or did you just notice it next
time you looked at that column?

Could you estimate how much of the grooming was performed that way?



Kevin Smith
Agile Coach
Wikimedia Foundation



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On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 3:47 PM, Dan Garry <dgarry at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> While I was on the Mobile Apps Team, the tech leads of each respective
> team had a fair bit of delegated authority to do bug triage themselves and
> make product decisions about small-scale things without involving me. I had
> the right as product owner to overrule them, but this happened so rarely
> that the delegated authority worked fantastically; I could try to focus on
> the bigger picture.
>
> Basically, I think this boils down to good old humility, respect, and
> trust: as a product owner, I have absolutely no issue with others doing
> asynchronous prioritisation of tasks that I am responsible for, provided
> that when there is disagreement we can have a dialogue and discussion about
> it, and that it's clear that ultimately it's the product owner that is
> responsible for the decision and any consequences that ensue.
>
> Dan
>
> On 17 June 2015 at 11:22, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> In a recent discussion[1], Quim said:
>>
>> "Meetings support Grooming, not the other way around. Grooming is an
>> ongoing, asynchronous, remote-friendly activity open to everybody's input.
>> Meetings are synchronous and, in practice, leaning towards restrictiveness
>> and co-location (the problem of distance is being solved, but no tech will
>> get rid of timezone differences). Meetings are useful to push grooming and
>> resolve whatever the online grooming was not able to resolve."
>>
>> I find this to be very intriguing and provocative. In our TPG
>> glossary[2], grooming is said to be an activity performed by the Product
>> Owner, with input from others. And that has been my own experience.
>> Certainly other people could email prioritization suggestions to the PO,
>> but to me that's not the meat of the grooming. Nobody but the PO should be
>> moving things around, right?
>>
>> The actual act of moving things around seems like it is best done one
>> session at a time (not one item at a time). That way, the relationships
>> between tasks can be observed, and the backlog can be viewed holistically.
>> That leads me back to synchronous thinking.
>>
>> This topic seems very relevant to the WMF, given our highly distributed
>> nature. If grooming can be done mostly outside meetings, that sounds great.
>> I would love to hear more from Quim on this as well as hearing opinions of
>> others.
>>
>> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Team_Practices_Group
>> [2]
>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Team_Practices_Group/Glossary#Backlog_grooming
>>
>> Kevin Smith
>> Agile Coach
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>>
>>
>> *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
>> the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Help us make it a reality.*
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Dan Garry
> Product Manager, Discovery
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
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