10 ms·

This sounds exactly like every other sprint-based process I have ever encountered.

latchkey 7y ago
Sprints have deadlines and a set amount of work... 'A two week sprint.' Iterations are 1 week and there is no expectation that a story will always fit within the current iteration. The only tool that I have found which can accurately visualize this difference is PT.
- supermatt 7y ago
  What is the point in an iteration?
  - latchkey 7y ago
    Good question. An iteration is a marker to generate velocity. All of the points collected in that week are summed together and the average of those points across a configurable threshold (typically 3 weeks) is the velocity. Once you have a velocity, you can start to make predictions about the future. For example, if velocity is 10, that means 10 points worth of stories can fit into an iteration. If the PM moves another story into the iteration, the last story would be automatically pushed into the next iteration. Makes it easier to answer the question of 'when will a story be done?' as well as 'how will changing the flow of stories affect deliverables?' Highly recommend you read the documentation, it has been formed over many years and is excellent. https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/quick_start/ https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/quick_start/
  - winrid 7y ago
    Because then we'd call them weeks and Sprints would be Fortnights :) In all seriousness I'm curious about the story pointing. Does the team meet together for that at Pivotal?
    - latchkey 7y ago
      Repeated from above: Pivotal has 3 regular meetings: daily morning standup (short), iteration planning (monday), retrospective (friday). Any new stories during the week that haven't been pointed get pointed in the morning meeting.
      - brlewis 7y ago
        Sounds like Pivotal combines elements from scrum and kanban in a way that works well for them. That's what you're supposed to do with agile -- keep adjusting the process until it's working well for your organization.
        latchkey 7y ago
        this ^^^^^^^^^^^
- vidarh 7y ago
  In practice, most places I've worked treats sprints much closer to how you describe your iterations than to a fixed amount of work. Most of the time, the sprint planning just provides some ceremony around ensuring important stories are discussed and points allocated, and priorities set, and the planned sprint is pretty much a line in the backlog that suggests an aspirational goal that is likely to change. The point is rarely to hit exactly that, but for it to serve as a means of talking about what needs to be done first - whether something needs to fit into this round, or can wait for the next. It also serves as a means of talking about inter-dependencies and sequencing of changes.
  - latchkey 7y ago
    I think you've been lucky in where you have worked. You read some of the other responses and it isn't the case at all. I've seen some really tragic examples. Pivotal has 3 regular meetings: daily morning standup (short), iteration planning (monday), retrospective (friday). Any new stories during the week that haven't been pointed get pointed in the morning meeting.
    - 0xFACEFEED 7y ago
      out of curiosity what value do you see in morning standups? 15 yrs and i still don't see it (i've really tried).
      - latchkey 7y ago
        I agree that the whole typical 'what did you do yesterday' is indeed lacking value. The standups are mostly just pointing the stories that need pointing, covering any questions and picking the pairs for the days work (pivotal is 100% pair programming). The meetings can be done within 5-15 minutes at most. I'm currently living at a yoga retreat center in the mountains of Vietnam. I can see from the practice that the first few minutes of silence is good to clear the mind. I think having standups is a similar good way to start the day with a positive attitude.
        7y ago
- matt74827289 7y ago
  The end of the sprint should not be a deadline, but a goal. Wasn't that kinda the point of the article? No one ever said a story has to fit within a sprint, that's not how agile or sprints are supposed to work. Some stories take multiple sprints. You should always break down large stories into sub-tasks that do fit within sprints. This iteration thing your describing sounds almost exactly like sprints to me, just reworded to sound like their own thing.
  - latchkey 7y ago
    Ah, the difference is that with iterations, there is never an 'end' and goals are just epics. Correct, all larger stories should be broken down. To be super clear, this is not my own thing. =) It is Pivotal's thing. I am just explaining the process as it was taught to me.
    - alasdair_ 7y ago
      >Ah, the difference is that with iterations, there is never an 'end' and goals are just epics. Jira uses epics in the same way. And I'm not sure what you mean by "there is never an 'end'" - how does that differ from sprints? Iterations and sprints are just two words for exactly the same thing.
- kerblang 7y ago
  When you say, "devs just pick the next one off the top", that sounds very much like Kanban instead of Scrum. Kanban is radically different but considered "agile". When Scrum degenerates into mgmt screaming, "you missed all your deadlines - again!", Kanban is often a great source of relief, because the only deadlines that count anymore are the "real" ones. It also allows much more flexibility with shifting priorities, which stakeholders love. Absolutely worth a try when Scrum has become a tool of oppression & misery.
  - latchkey 7y ago
    I wouldn't really try to put a name on it other than Pivotal Process or Pivotal Methodology... I was just googling around to see if they even name it and found these articles... https://infocus.dellemc.com/rahul_bhandari/software-development-dell-agile-methodology-pivotal/ https://infocus.dellemc.com/rahul_bhandari/software-developm... (corporate version) https://pivotal.io/agile https://pivotal.io/agile (this one bugs me a bit since it really just compares against waterfall) https://medium.com/@ryanjjones10/what-is-the-pivotal-process-417fab075f4f https://medium.com/@ryanjjones10/what-is-the-pivotal-process... (this one is more accurate)
    - kerblang 7y ago
      Okay well it looks like they've put even more emphasis on pair programming, which Kanban certainly doesn't require, and... I'm not gonna advocate for that part.
      - alasdair_ 7y ago
        Pair programming all the time comes from XP. Almost no one does it, not even Kent Beck. In fact, the only place that I know of that tried "real" eXtreme Programming was the Chrysler Compensation project, which ultimately failed. I'd be amazed that Pivotal actually does pair programming all the time, except that they are in the business of selling tools to facilitate exactly this process.
        7y ago
- balfirevic 7y ago
  > Sprints have deadlines and a set amount of work... Well, they shouldn't: https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast
- nradov 7y ago
  You don't understand how agile development actually works and appear to be confused about terminology. There is no difference between a sprint and an iteration; they are two words for the same thing. A sprint is a planning cycle, not a deadline. Many other tools such as Jira or Rally work as well or better than PT. Recommend you broaden your experience.

Sprints have deadlines and a set amount of work... 'A two week sprint.' Iterations are 1 week and there is no expectation that a story will always fit within the current iteration. The only tool that I have found which can accurately visualize this difference is PT.

supermatt 7y ago
What is the point in an iteration?
- latchkey 7y ago
  Good question. An iteration is a marker to generate velocity. All of the points collected in that week are summed together and the average of those points across a configurable threshold (typically 3 weeks) is the velocity. Once you have a velocity, you can start to make predictions about the future. For example, if velocity is 10, that means 10 points worth of stories can fit into an iteration. If the PM moves another story into the iteration, the last story would be automatically pushed into the next iteration. Makes it easier to answer the question of 'when will a story be done?' as well as 'how will changing the flow of stories affect deliverables?' Highly recommend you read the documentation, it has been formed over many years and is excellent. https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/quick_start/ https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/quick_start/
- winrid 7y ago
  Because then we'd call them weeks and Sprints would be Fortnights :) In all seriousness I'm curious about the story pointing. Does the team meet together for that at Pivotal?
  - latchkey 7y ago
    Repeated from above: Pivotal has 3 regular meetings: daily morning standup (short), iteration planning (monday), retrospective (friday). Any new stories during the week that haven't been pointed get pointed in the morning meeting.
    - brlewis 7y ago
      Sounds like Pivotal combines elements from scrum and kanban in a way that works well for them. That's what you're supposed to do with agile -- keep adjusting the process until it's working well for your organization.
      - latchkey 7y ago
        this ^^^^^^^^^^^
vidarh 7y ago
In practice, most places I've worked treats sprints much closer to how you describe your iterations than to a fixed amount of work. Most of the time, the sprint planning just provides some ceremony around ensuring important stories are discussed and points allocated, and priorities set, and the planned sprint is pretty much a line in the backlog that suggests an aspirational goal that is likely to change. The point is rarely to hit exactly that, but for it to serve as a means of talking about what needs to be done first - whether something needs to fit into this round, or can wait for the next. It also serves as a means of talking about inter-dependencies and sequencing of changes.
- latchkey 7y ago
  I think you've been lucky in where you have worked. You read some of the other responses and it isn't the case at all. I've seen some really tragic examples. Pivotal has 3 regular meetings: daily morning standup (short), iteration planning (monday), retrospective (friday). Any new stories during the week that haven't been pointed get pointed in the morning meeting.
  - 0xFACEFEED 7y ago
    out of curiosity what value do you see in morning standups? 15 yrs and i still don't see it (i've really tried).
    - latchkey 7y ago
      I agree that the whole typical 'what did you do yesterday' is indeed lacking value. The standups are mostly just pointing the stories that need pointing, covering any questions and picking the pairs for the days work (pivotal is 100% pair programming). The meetings can be done within 5-15 minutes at most. I'm currently living at a yoga retreat center in the mountains of Vietnam. I can see from the practice that the first few minutes of silence is good to clear the mind. I think having standups is a similar good way to start the day with a positive attitude.
      - 7y ago
matt74827289 7y ago
The end of the sprint should not be a deadline, but a goal. Wasn't that kinda the point of the article? No one ever said a story has to fit within a sprint, that's not how agile or sprints are supposed to work. Some stories take multiple sprints. You should always break down large stories into sub-tasks that do fit within sprints. This iteration thing your describing sounds almost exactly like sprints to me, just reworded to sound like their own thing.
- latchkey 7y ago
  Ah, the difference is that with iterations, there is never an 'end' and goals are just epics. Correct, all larger stories should be broken down. To be super clear, this is not my own thing. =) It is Pivotal's thing. I am just explaining the process as it was taught to me.
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    >Ah, the difference is that with iterations, there is never an 'end' and goals are just epics. Jira uses epics in the same way. And I'm not sure what you mean by "there is never an 'end'" - how does that differ from sprints? Iterations and sprints are just two words for exactly the same thing.
kerblang 7y ago
When you say, "devs just pick the next one off the top", that sounds very much like Kanban instead of Scrum. Kanban is radically different but considered "agile". When Scrum degenerates into mgmt screaming, "you missed all your deadlines - again!", Kanban is often a great source of relief, because the only deadlines that count anymore are the "real" ones. It also allows much more flexibility with shifting priorities, which stakeholders love. Absolutely worth a try when Scrum has become a tool of oppression & misery.
- latchkey 7y ago
  I wouldn't really try to put a name on it other than Pivotal Process or Pivotal Methodology... I was just googling around to see if they even name it and found these articles... https://infocus.dellemc.com/rahul_bhandari/software-development-dell-agile-methodology-pivotal/ https://infocus.dellemc.com/rahul_bhandari/software-developm... (corporate version) https://pivotal.io/agile https://pivotal.io/agile (this one bugs me a bit since it really just compares against waterfall) https://medium.com/@ryanjjones10/what-is-the-pivotal-process-417fab075f4f https://medium.com/@ryanjjones10/what-is-the-pivotal-process... (this one is more accurate)
  - kerblang 7y ago
    Okay well it looks like they've put even more emphasis on pair programming, which Kanban certainly doesn't require, and... I'm not gonna advocate for that part.
    - alasdair_ 7y ago
      Pair programming all the time comes from XP. Almost no one does it, not even Kent Beck. In fact, the only place that I know of that tried "real" eXtreme Programming was the Chrysler Compensation project, which ultimately failed. I'd be amazed that Pivotal actually does pair programming all the time, except that they are in the business of selling tools to facilitate exactly this process.
      - 7y ago
balfirevic 7y ago
> Sprints have deadlines and a set amount of work... Well, they shouldn't: https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast
nradov 7y ago
You don't understand how agile development actually works and appear to be confused about terminology. There is no difference between a sprint and an iteration; they are two words for the same thing. A sprint is a planning cycle, not a deadline. Many other tools such as Jira or Rally work as well or better than PT. Recommend you broaden your experience.