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It is.. every retrospective is the same: "why did we only deliver x points when we committed to [much bigger] y at the start?"
My answer's the same every time, but the next day we start the same process again.. 
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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160 points were promised but only 40 delivered
OK - so now your velocity is 40, which means you cannot promise more than 40 in your next sprint.
Then - if that gets done, slowly increase the velocity to towards your target.
Also - use customer value to choose the most impactful 40 points and deliver them first. Don't make the stuff that delivers real value wait for the HiPPO driven requirements.
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: OK - so now your velocity is 40, which means you cannot promise more than 40 in your next sprint.
In theory that's correct. In reality it means little more than delivering a checkbox and a text field on a page..
15 developers, 2 weeks, personally I'd expect more.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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In my opinion, 15 developers is far too many. I'd suggest you work out how you could do a velocity of 20 with 2 developers, then cut your project into independent chunks of 20-ness.*
(*20 arbitrarily chosen to define the point)
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: In my opinion, 15 developers is far too many.
It is.. our morning stand-up takes forever and covers a lot of stuff irrelevant to many in the team. Most places I've worked at I've been in teams of 1-6, and they worked much better.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Whomever is responsible for the 'team' or 'project' needs to define priorities and timelines.
If they are not being met, a determination needs to be made as to why and what the consequences are of not meeting the timelines: the project is not completed which results in lost revenue which can result is staff reduction for example.
If that person is you, address it with your management and ask what 'corrective' actions can be taken.
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Unfortunately it is not me. It'd be a different team if I were responsible for it.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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As others have said, throw out Agile (and unit testing, huge waste of time mostly.)
The problem with sprints is that they are essentially developer driven. Go back to good 'ol management 101:
- Here's the features we need
- Here's the timeline and dependencies for each feature (remember Ghantt charts?)
- Missing the deadline will result in reprimand, pay reduction, or being terminated.
It's time for the kiddies in diapers learning to ride bicycles with training wheels to grow up. 
Marc
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In my opinion unit testing is a benefit to a project once it gets into maintenance and new features start getting added. I think the main problem is you see people unit testing brain-dead functions with every conceivable input so the unit test takes 10x longer to write than the function itself. Unit test at the first level things can actually go wrong.
Seems like the main problem here is the team is breaking all the big no-no's. Premature refactoring (when the code is already "clean"), premature optimization, and using a development paradigm the team isn't familiar with (TDD).
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Jon McKee wrote: In my opinion unit testing is a benefit to a project once it gets into maintenance and new features start getting added.
Absolutely! In fact, 110% agreement with everything you said.
Marc
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Jon McKee wrote: I think the main problem is you see people unit testing brain-dead functions with every conceivable input so the unit test takes 10x longer to write than the function itself.
Yep, we've got that (and I've brought it up many, many times).
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Brent Jenkins wrote: On top of that, we've got developers going in changing working code simply because they think it should be done differently (in their opinion, better).
This could be the reason why things are behind. Agile is about delivering new features on a regular basis, not refactoring code because someone doesn't like it. If code needs refactoring it should be a backlog item that is added to a sprint.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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Kevin Marois wrote: Agile is about delivering new features on a regular basis, not refactoring code because someone doesn't like it. If code needs refactoring it should be a backlog item that is added to a sprint.
That's a good point.. I'll use that in the next meeting 
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Brent Jenkins wrote: so I'm working with a team that's (relatively) young
Brent Jenkins wrote: unit tests written up front
I am not a big fan of test driven development, sounds good on paper, but it is shite in reality.
Also, I don't like working with a bunch of relatively young people. Been there, done that, f***ing nightmare and a half.
In summary, run to the hills, run for your life.
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+5 for the Maiden reference.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Brent Jenkins wrote: Things are being (IMO) over-tested and (also IMO) and there's an over-reliance on unit/acceptance testing to pick up all defects - real bugs are being missed and picked up at the point of actual system testing (or even worse, demo).
Take 2 - and have everyone read this blog post[^] (no, not from me). 
Marc
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If it works: do not fix it.
What's the point of refactoring if no new feature is added in the end?
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Lets all go the park and feed the pigeons - we would be more useful to at least the birds.
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Agreed; bacon.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Contrary to other opinions here, there is nothing wrong with Agile. Couple of thoughts to help you hopefully get a handle on this:
First: the points. Is 40 points your true capacity? If you're doing 2 week sprints and only have 4 developers (as an example), then why are you scheduling 160 points per sprint? If your capacity is significantly higher than 40 points, and you're just not meeting it, then the scrum master needs to come down on folks who are taking a week to finish a 2 point story. Nip that stuff in the bud. A 2 point story should be done by the next scrum, and if it's not the SM needs to buttonhole the dev and ask him or her why, and how they're going to fix it for the next 2 point story.
Second: Who is the owner? Who is prioritizing stories? I don't have a problem with technical debt stories, but if those stories are being prioritized ahead of critical defects or features, then you got the wrong people deciding priorities. The SM or PM needs to fix that ASAP.
Last: Unit testing is not right or wrong, but if you're going to do it, then A) make sure it's in the story points and B) make sure unit test results are given the same weight as a fistful of air: A unit test is only there to let developers know if they broke someone else's code. Unit tests do not decide if a story was implemented properly. Only Business and/or QA make that call.
Edit to add the real, final last item: If someone is doing work that's not part of a user story or defect, then they need to be at the very least kicked off the project. Possibly fired if your company wants to go that far.
modified 9-Dec-16 15:52pm.
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Some good points here. I'm not actually against Agile, it's more down to how different companies interpret/implement it and here it's done as bad as I've seen anywhere. 
[Edit] We're a team of about 15 developers. Looking at the work we've got (from a technical aspect) I think that we commit to about the right amount (it works out to 160 points in a sprint). The problems all come at the time of implementation.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I agree with Marc Clifton that management seems poor here and to that one could add leadership. One thing that always interested me on the occasions I was involved in interviewing was how many completed projects the applicant had worked on. Many (large) teams are comprised of lots of people who have rarely if ever seen a project to completion. This is one of the real components of what is called experience. Without it individuals and teams have a fear of delivery. I have seen this a number of times and it manifests itself in many of the behaviours you have described.
Why is refactoring needed on working code? It just prevents the project from advancing. Good design should isolate any issues arising from sub optimal code.
I agree with others who have said that working on perfect tests for a product that never gets delivered is not the way. Agile aside somebody has to remind the team of what the goal is.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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Some points, from my experience:
1. Looks like the product owner is not prioritising the user stories. Not all features can have 'highest priority'. Also, looks like writing the unit tests is taking more priority than writing working code; this should reverse. The product owner needs to get more assertive towards setting priorities.
2. Sprint retrospective meetings are not held, or are ineffective in getting actionable points to the team members. Need to enforce the action items from these retrospectives. Task of Scrum Master.
3. Achieving 160 story points per sprint seems to be an over-realistic goal. Need to go after something more realistic, 40 - 50 story points per sprint in the short term, and slowly increasing to about 70 or 80 in the longer term.
4. Everybody in the team cannot be a leader. The junior members should be 'forced' to listen to orders from the senior members, and the Scrum Master should have the final say.
5. Also depends to a certain extent on the agile tool, rather the features provided by the tool used for agile implementation. If the activities of every team member are seen by every other team member on a daily basis, then this would dissuade the individual team members from prolonging the delivery of their user stories. The team members would not like to be seen as bottlenecks.
modified 10-Dec-16 23:36pm.
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