What To Do When Stories Keep Rolling Over
A newer Scrum Master from India quickly noticed that his team was more focused on the development manager’s desire for productivity and individual capacity than for the team to work on completing items in the sprint.
He added that developers begin work, but it sits in a queue for testing. Also, the team only has one full time tester for three developers, as well a new tester with a 10 percent allocation to the team. By the end of the sprint, the team has started a lot of stories, but hardly anything gets over the finish line.
He reached out to the Agile Mentors Community for help and got a lot of great answers.
Everyone in Scrum is Part of the Team
A release train manager from North Carolina, stressed the importance of everyone, despite their job title, is a member of the team. “We don’t distinguish between different roles. Whether developer, tester or business analyst, they are team members.”
She added that to build up this culture of ‘team’ she had testers write test cases daily as the developer progresses. “Test cases are compared to what’s being built and adjustments are made on both sides as needed. By the time a story is ready for testing, it’s been tested and it’s ready for demo with product owner acceptance,” she added.
Remember the Goal is to Deliver a Working Product Increment
A Scrum Master from Virginia said, “The goal of each sprint should be to deliver a working product increment. With that in mind, the whole team should be focused on doing whatever it takes to get that increment delivered.”
He added that a few ways to help with this mindset are having smaller stories so that work flows smoothly across the board throughout the sprint. He also suggests using story teams where testers, developers and the product owner do a huddle when each story is pulled into progress and have a discussion on the work and testing to be done. Other suggestions are getting developers comfortable with testing stories, test driven development and test automation.
Have the Team Retrospect on a Solution
An agile coach from Texas suggests having the team retrospect on a solution. “The team needs to retrospect and solve for the testing bottleneck. This, in my teams, means everyone tests until the bottleneck is cleared. New work is not started until the block is gone,” she says.
To join the conversation and get great advice on your most challenging agile issues, join the Agile Mentors Community. Visit