Sprint 4 was really tough as can be seen on the three burndown charts below.
So what happened? No excuses, the day job got in the way. Whereas for the first two thirds of the module I successfully managed the work-course-life balance, the last four weeks were really tough , needing some very difficult prioriy calls.
Even now, as I write this post it’s 23:49 on a Sunday evening and I’m trying to catch up having had to put in a 12-hour day working on a Gantt chart for a 2-year project funded by Innovate UK that kicks off with the Monitoring Officer’s meeting next week. (Unfortunately we have to run waterfall for them otherwise Agile would be my weapon of choice)
When looking at the burndown charts I feel really embarassed. The lack of progress in sprint 4.1 meant an huge over committment in sprint 4.2. My ego got in the way and I did exactly what I keep telling my development teams not to do: convinced myself I could crunch through the workload and catch up. I felt make a lot of progress that week because I had a week’s leave…
…but the velocity report tells a very different story indeed. Sprint 4.2 did see an upturn in velocity but this was still below my best performance. That said, sprint 2.3 was very intense and sustaining that level of performance is arguably not healthy. Looking back now I realise the mental fatigue caused by sprint 2.3 was as much a contributing factor as the day job for a drop in performance. With these two factors combined it’s hardly a surprise I fell off the proverbial wagon and sprint 3.1 was a total failure! I lost momentum, didn’t stick to my default diary and fell behind.
This really bothers me. As I look future and the imminent arrival of module 2, I cannot afford for this to happen again. Module 1, Development Practice, was relatively straightforwards. Module 2 I expect to be significantly more challenging (but more of that in my Week 12 Reflection post when I write it tomorrow evening) and I feel I need to have a strategy for this, just in case. At this stage I don’t know that that is but at least have the Christmas break to consider it.
| Stop Doing | Keep Doing | Start Doing |
| Crunch development | Work the process | Keep an eye on the marking rubrik 😉 |
| Deviating from default diary | Story analysis and breakdown | Leave work at work |
| ‘Binge’ committing to catch up | Retrospectives | Review the burndown progress daily |
| Working until 3am | Be strict about making velocity-based committments |
Conclusion
Sprint 4 was mediocre. Not as diastrous as sprint 3 but not nearly as good as sprints 1 and 2. Making good progress during the earlier part of the module definitely helped to carry me forwards in the latter stages and I dread to think what would have happened had I not had this safety net to fall back on.
To save repeating myself, rather than elaborate on thins here as it’s beyone the scope of the week 3 retrospective, I’ll discuss this further in my Week 12 Reflection.
Needless to say I am now very aware I need to up my game for Module 2.
List of Images
Figure 1. THORN, 2020 Sprint 4.1 Burn-down
Figure 2. THORN, 2020 Sprint 4.2 Burn-down
Figure 3. THORN, 2020 Sprint 4.3 Burn-down
Figure 4. THORN, 2020 Sprint 4 Velocity Report
Photo by David Travis on Unsplash
