Sprint Cadence

The Benefits of Long-Term Planning

A 12-month timeline and roadmap was created for the engineering team to provide a plan and vision for their work. This plan involves brainstorming ideas, discussing impactful goals, and breaking them down quarter-by-quarter. This 12-month plan allows engineers to know what they'll be working on long-term and also helps to attract potential candidates.

Improving Operational Readiness

After an unexpected departure of a key engineer, a team of 12 engineers with multiple products to support needed to become more operationally aware. To do this, they created a team improvement plan, studied how other teams handled the issue, adopted dashboards and metrics, asked for help from other teams, and created information radiators. Over time, they improved their process and were better prepared to help drive an engineering-wide initiative. Lessons learned included getting engineers to buy into the problem, being able to trace bugs to rare user errors, and learning more about the systems and their potential failure modes.

Different meetings for different purposes

The manager of three teams in New York and Tel Aviv holds different types of meetings to ensure visibility between teams. Standups, sprint planning, and exceptional project meetings are used to communicate progress and involve people in decisions. The manager applies the principle of trust and encourages team members to communicate their progress during dedicated times.

Team Collaboration Will Make a Customer Happy

The problem of ownership between two teams using different technologies was addressed by introducing a customer's perspective and reframing the discussion. Scrum was used to create better team dynamics and regular Scrum of Scrums meetings were proposed. QAs were invited to participate and organize group tests. The lesson learned was that ownership should focus on the product as a whole and all teams should be guided by customers' perspective. QAs were hesitant to join, but once they understood their role they were more eager to participate.

Implementing Development Processes

When the author took over their team three years ago, they had to introduce development processes to the workflow to ensure everyone was on the same page. This included introducing kanban boards, JIRA tickets, and Git branching to the process. Documentation was also written to provide context for the QA team. The author learned that it is important to earn buy-in and to listen to the team's pain points in order to find the best solutions. This has resulted in smoother workflows and better visibility for the QA team.

From Waterfall To Agile

This article discusses the process of transitioning from a Waterfall to an Agile software development life cycle. It explains the actions taken by two different companies, Inuit and LexisNexis, to make the transition successful. The article also highlights the lessons learned from the process, such as starting with both the product and engineering teams, and not relying on external consultants.