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How can I organize 3 developers to work together with 2 clients?

Last post 10:02 pm November 7, 2017 by Gregory M. Smith
2 replies
Lucca Cavalheiro
12:54 pm November 7, 2017

I started working in a stock broker that hired me and more two developers to build a software to help them. I am the newest member of the development team. My friend, another developer in the team, asked me to create a software engineering model to apply in the project, because the way they are doing now is not working. They do not have a specific model to follow, they just decide what to do verbally, the two owners of the stock broker (which are in this case, the clients) ask them to develop a feature so the developers just stop what they were doing and start working on it, they do not have a specific list of requisites or features that the product should have...

My idea was originally to try to implement and adapt Scrum in the following terms:

  • Create a product backlog ASAP.
  • The product owner role would be filled by the owners of the company.
  • Me and the other developer would be the Scrum Team.
  • One of the developers would be the Scrum Master.
  • We would have one sprint per week.
  • Meetings every friday to review the last sprint and plan the next one. (Sprint Review, Retrospective and Planning)
  • I do not see the necessity of a daily review meeting. I thought we could do sporadic meetings during sprints when one of the members feel necessary.

Is it possible that this is going to work? What can I do to make it better?

Ian Mitchell
09:22 pm November 7, 2017

It’s possible that it may work. However, if you chop and change Scrum components such as events, the result will not be Scrum and it would be unreasonable to expect its benefits.

Why not plan to implement Scrum from the outset, including Daily Scrums where the team’s progress towards its Sprint Goal is dutifully inspected and adapted?

Gregory M. Smith
10:02 pm November 7, 2017

Your plan is different than Scrum in two significant ways:

One Product Owner. Having two will increase confusion about different priorities and ordering of the Backlog. One company owner should be selected to be the Product Owner. Remember, the Product Owner can be advised by others, including the non-Product Owner company owner.

Daily Scrum Meetings. These are AT MOST 15 minutes. They can be shorter. I find that meetings increase 1) focus on the purpose of the meeting, and 2) accountability of team members to each other, and 3) remove any barriers of getting the conversation started.

Even if you are in the same room at your computers talking to each other regularly, stand up and review what you've done yesterday, what you're planning for today, and any specific difficulties with completing the Sprint Backlog items for today.

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