What is the pattern is all about? Something that repeatedly repeats in a given environment. From this, you know the opposite of this is an anti-pattern, so something should not happen. That usually happens all the time, given the kind of agile transformation. So what are some examples of anti-patterns? Again if you look at this scenario, let’s say I have a coach, and this guy is trying to give feedback on the daily stand-up. Then you know what happens that would be great, and then if you notice, this guy is telling you that I see some problems in your daily scrum. Then why are you not asking the three questions and everything, and then you know the client says that he feels disconnected? If you look at it, the coach tells you that you have to follow scrum by the book and have these three questions. So if I have to ask quickly, what this stand called is? Is this advising or a coaching stance? For me, it’s more of this guy trying to advise the client based on what he learned in a typical scrum class, and you know if you are the client here, how do you feel in this situation if this scenario is before you? More importantly, I see this situation repeating pretty often. Most of the time, we end up telling people, we end up advising people, and we end up consulting rather than taking a coaching stance, and that’s what I see in this scenario.
Burndown on the last day of the sprint
Now there are many behavioral patterns that I see here. For example, developers often want to work independently, and everyone wants to work on one user story. Then they sit on the user story until the last day of the sprint. You know that your burn down finally down, like spikes down on the last day. Now, what do you think about this pattern? This anti-pattern and for how many of you this anti-pattern is getting repeated? That’s what I’m more interested in knowing. How many of you have seen the burndown like this in your Jira or any tool you use? To me, using tools for burndown is one of the most and biggest reasons.
Why do I say this? When you use a tool or anything like that, most of the work usually happens in the last one or two days. Now, you know what the team is doing? So you should be fortunate to get one or two steps, and that also if you’re lucky. Only you will get it once in a while, So this is one anti-pattern where I see most of the burndown or spike down on the last day. If you are the scrum master, what is your approach here, and how do you deal with such a situation? How many of you have seen it, burn down or spiking down in the last one or two days, and your approach in such cases? The spiking down on the last day of the sprint is where I see a massive challenge in helping teams understand what they are doing in the name of agile. The shorter stories and frequent updates help, but even the update is also happening. There are so many reasons why a burndown will not spike down until a story is fully getting done, and this is something that I see pretty often. So one reason which I see is how do you control your work in progress? That’s one of the biggest challenges that I see with their teams.
Maximizing Utilization and reporting planned vs. actual hours
The next anti-pattern is also one of my favorite ones, so……
To read the full blog Anti-Pattern and Common Smells at OGuild
