Colin said that our Sprint Burndown chart wasn’t accurately reflecting the work done. He said we were overrunning with each Work Item which meant that we would have 0 points for one Sprint, then we get the full value in the next Sprint – which shows as a sharp drop on the Burndown chart.
I told him that’s how the Burndown charts work – but he said they want more accuracy. I argued further: If the requirements haven’t been met, then it’s not complete, so you haven’t added value to the software – i.e. you have made no progress.
A few days later, our Scrum Master had been in a meeting with him and was instructing us on his new process. Colin’s idea apparently was to add a “task” for each day and link it to the Work Item. At the end of the day, you mark the task as closed.
I’m like “eeeeeeer wut”. So now it tracks your daily work.
I told her she must have misunderstood. Adding a task per day is just counting the amount of days in the week. I suppose if you take a day off, then you won’t count that day.
I questioned it, and she agreed that it didn’t sound right. So she goes back to Colin. No, he really does want a closed task per day, but also said to create a task even if you are on holiday.
Wut.
add tasks to all the things!
So they want effort more accurately tracked, but are now just counting days, even the ones you haven’t worked. Surely if you create a chart, it’s just gonna be a diagonal line with no fluctuations.
What are we supposed to write for the task’s title and description? “Carried on working on it 7.5 hours”.
I just refused to do it, but the Scrum Master did the admin on my behalf. The idea lasted about a month.
I find that Burndown Charts often look unclear anyway. Here is one from another team:
So what are we even seeing here? The chart to the left shows Tasks, although the chart doesn’t seem to show the correct Completed figure – it shows as 0%. However, you do see the average is 46 which I think is per day – which illustrates the ridiculous number of tasks that teams were creating anyway.
The chart to the right shows User Stories but I think it’s not the number created, but the total points assigned. So one might be worth 1 point, but another could be worth 8 – it depends on how complicated the work is. I think this is a typical Burndown where the first few days nothing is complete because the developers are working on fixes, then the tester will get it in a few days. In the second week, more items are completed. There were even 4 points removed, presumably a change of requirement or maybe it was deemed redundant.
This is another chart that a team posted to boast about their progress. This example is a bit more unclear, but I noticed the Tasks Burndown (start 12th September) is not for the same time period that the Stories Burndown is (start 29th August).
The Stories Burndown looks interesting doesn’t it? It looks like only a small amount of work was done and then when it gets to the end of the second week, they add even more work. I did theorise that maybe they didn’t officially start the project until after 10th September but what does the 72% Completed mean? That seems to imply they are ¾ through their project. ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
Stranger Coding Tings 