I did a big Agile roll out and the team came up with a list of the things which might upset the Agile process – Agile gotchas. When I have sometime I will add suggestions for how to deal with them.
- What do I do when … ?
- New high priority items are requested mid-Timebox.
- Large number of tasks in Timebox Plan are not finished by end of Timebox
- Team members are late for daily meetings or not engaged
- Product Owner does not show up to Timebox Review or not engaged
- Product Owner responsibilities with more than one person
- Product development is running in parallel with operational demands on the team
- Meeting madness strikes
- No walls are available to create Informative Workspace
- no space to co-locate team
- Agile Project Manager is late for their own daily meeting
- Developers do not have time to write unit tests or get code reviewed
- Estimates go up a lot during the Timebox
- Planning to use a skilled resource over more than one Agile project
- (Key) Stakeholder does not show up to the Timebox Review, or not engaged
- Developers do not work on what was planned during Timebox planning
- Task estimates aren’t burning (‘just 1 point left..’ lasts for days)
- Designers don’t come to the daily meetings (‘we’ll come when it’s relevant’)
- Certain tasks in the Timebox, e.g. sort our rack space, seem non-estimatable
- Team is not delivering potential shippable code at end of every Timebox
- Backend code and front end code developed out of synchronisation (in one Timebox backend is written, next Timebox its front end)
- Team does not engage properly with testers
- Product Owner not setting proper Timebox goals or no goals at all (e.g. Finish All Work, Finish Entire product)