Story Details and Acceptance Criteria
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An ongoing pain I've found on more than one job is poorly written stories. There's an awful lot of people who just don't get how stories should be written.
I'm not talking about looking up the Scrum methodology documentation and parroting that, I just mean that the programmer should be able to look at a story and precisely tell what the end result should be. Not the How-To, but the end result. At least as far as is possible.
For example, I've seen stories where the AC expand the scope of the description.
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@jinpa said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
An ongoing pain I've found on more than one job is poorly written stories. There's an awful lot of people who just don't get how stories should be written.
I'm not talking about looking up the Scrum methodology documentation and parroting that, I just mean that the programmer should be able to look at a story and precisely tell what the end result should be. Not the How-To, but the end result. At least as far as is possible.
For example, I've seen stories where the AC expand the scope of the description.
This is normal. Unless someone fluent in dev speak is involved in the writing, they’re almost always like this unless they’re so superficial that anyone with a passing familiarity with the system in question would know what to do.
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There's a few fixes to some of your problems.
First, when you are assigned (or when you pick up) the story, read it and determine if you are clear what the end result should be. If not, send it back to the person responsible, call a meeting, or fix it yourself - whichever is the accepted practice where you work.
As for the ever-expanding scope. One of the simpler methods is to never re-work a story. If it isn't what the user wanted, that's OK.... but it's still done. For the next round of changes, a new story is required. It helps in this step to have a third party do QA. The main cause of this type of problem is when the requester does testing.
Testing should be someone reading the story (not the comments) and verifying that the delivered product does what's said there. If you do something that is in the comments, but not in the story, the tester should fail it.
If the tester can't figure out what the story means - then you are back to your story writing problem. A standard practice to handle this is to have a "Three Amigos" meeting. The requester, developer, and tester all get together and make sure they all understand what the work entails.
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@Jaime said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
A standard practice to handle this is to have a "Three Amigos" meeting. The requester, developer, and tester all get together and make sure they all understand what the work entails.
But then who is to be the more-than-famous El Guapo?
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@dkf The scrummaster, of course.
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@jinpa I thought the scrum master was El Guano. Or is that the PM?
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@HardwareGeek said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
@jinpa I thought the scrum master was El Guano. Or is that the PM?
Either of these candidates sound like they're full of shit, frankly.
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@Jaime said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
First, when you are assigned (or when you pick up) the story, read it and determine if you are clear what the end result should be. If not, send it back to the person responsible, call a meeting, or fix it yourself - whichever is the accepted practice where you work.
So you don't do refinements?
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@nerd4sale said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
So you don't do refinements?
I'm not saying what we do, I'm saying what he should do in his situation. In a sane world, no story would get on a sprint until it's a good story.
Given @jinpa's original post, that obviously isn't happening. It's more helpful to give suggestions about what he can do rather then tell him what the people upstream of him could do.
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@Jaime said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
@nerd4sale said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
So you don't do refinements?
I'm not saying what we do, I'm saying what he should do in his situation. In a sane world, no story would get on a sprint until it's a good story.
Given @jinpa's original post, that obviously isn't happening. It's more helpful to give suggestions about what he can do rather then tell him what the people upstream of him could do.
I just find everything you say in this topic hysterical. It's party-line domination. Group dynamics are the intelligent getting dominated by the powerful. This is what always happens. It is not the exception, it is the norm.
I expect you to respond with, "You're doing it wrong."
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@jinpa If you are the intelligent and are being dominated by the powerful, then I suggest you go find another job. It's not like that everywhere.
Everything I say isn't simply "party line", it's simple human interaction. If someone writes a story that's unintelligible and constantly changes it as you are working, don't put up with it. If your answer is "they have power and I can do nothing"... then leave. Your workplace will be like this until they give power to those who know what they are doing.
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@Jaime said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
@jinpa If you are the intelligent and are being dominated by the powerful, then I suggest you go find another job. It's not like that everywhere.
Everything I say isn't simply "party line", it's simple human interaction. If someone writes a story that's unintelligible and constantly changes it as you are working, don't put up with it. If your answer is "they have power and I can do nothing"... then leave. Your workplace will be like this until they give power to those who know what they are doing.
That said, my experience trends towards “they have power and I can do nothing” being vastly more common than not. While I am definitely in the camp of “I don’t say no as much as I should”, others I speak to agree, and not just here…
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@Arantor said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
“they have power and I can do nothing” being vastly more common than not
You won't get an argument from me about this. I've seen countless groups get almost nothing done because of problems exactly like this.
However, this does not mean that the solution isn't simple, obvious, and straightforward. Often, those in power don't want to change. That's OK, they can live in their world, but I'm not living there with them.
I don't work in Nirvana and I do see this sort of thing with some regularity. When it happens, I recognize that the person with power has made a decision and I know what the result will be. I offer them guidance and advice, which they usually don't accept. I either accept that or I remove myself from the situation. I don't go to some Internet board and hope that someone there will tell me how to fix them.
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@jinpa said in Story Details and Acceptance Criteria:
I expect you to respond with, "You're doing it wrong."
Everyone does it wrong sometimes. Some people do it wrong a whole lot more than others.
