3 ms·
I've worked at an agency that went fully into Agile and Scrum. When it worked well, we had a single sprint board with different product backlogs, with differen
by EnderMB 9y ago
I've worked at an agency that went fully into Agile and Scrum.
When it worked well, we had a single sprint board with different product backlogs, with different PO's for each product (where possible). All dev work would go onto a single sprint board, and we'd all attack the highest priority story (where possible) until the dev work was complete. UX/UI were introduced into the team, and when it worked best they worked with the frontend developers to create designs and prototypes to be signed off, and this went through typical backlog grooming until it was ready to go fully into the sprint.
In my experience, Scrum only works in an agency environment when "the process" is strict. All ceremonies/meetings run for the amount of time required, all clients are aware of the process and have a product owner on hand to speak to, standups are kept short and purely as a technical update, rather than a reporting meeting, and sprints are worked out properly and never overloaded, with sprint points being adjusted based on velocity.
When we stuck to this process, everything worked brilliantly, and the way we worked felt more robust. Instead of everything coming across the line in one go, we were testing and releasing individual stories on time, and when things inevitably changed we adjusted where needed or told the client to wait until the next sprint.
Of course, over time our management took liberties. Standups were attended by account managers (who decided they were no longer product owners) and turned into 30 mins+ reporting meetings, sprint retros and reviews stopped, and sprint planning was reduced to an hour. Additionally, we were asked to deliver part-way through a sprint and to deliver to UAT with no testing. The difference in delivery was night and day. We went from a team that could deliver quickly with ample testing time and enough of a break between sprints to not feel stressed, to a team of cowboys that deliver buggy code.