Stories/Enablers for Deep Dive and Education in Backlog
Hi all,
it will be interesting to know how you manage activity inside the team that also took some capacity but affects the outcome value and product functionality not directly?
For example, someone in the team needs to make deep dives (education sessions) for other team members. It takes time, do you take it into backlog and estimate as an enabler or have a separate to-do list for such activity?
Have a nice week!
From the Scrum Guide section that describes the Product Backlog
The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product.
From the section that describes the Sprint Backlog
The Sprint Backlog is composed of the Sprint Goal (why), the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint (what), as well as an actionable plan for delivering the Increment (how).
The Sprint Backlog is a plan by and for the Developers. It is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the Developers plan to accomplish during the Sprint in order to achieve the Sprint Goal.
If the work that you are describing as enablers does not relate to work needed to improve the product or the work needed to accomplish the Sprint Goal, why would it be represented in the either backlog?
The Product and Sprint Backlogs are not expected to represent everything that the Scrum Team does every day. It is to track the progress towards the Product Goal and the Sprint Goals to deliver valuable increments. What benefit does it provide to track every detail of the work they do? Do you enter items into the backlogs for tracking lunch, breaks, social discussion about weekend plans? Do you have items to track the 1:1 meetings that people have with their managers? Or the Daily Scrum, Sprint Planning, refinement, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective? Are activities like paired programming, reading an article about new technologies tracked by backlog items? Many of these are activities that everyone does that benefit them for career development, organizational processes or relaxing the brain but they have nothing to do with the Product or Sprint Goals.
For example, someone in the team needs to make deep dives (education sessions) for other team members. It takes time, do you take it into backlog and estimate as an enabler or have a separate to-do list for such activity?
If this work was made visible in the Product Backlog or Sprint Backlog, how would the team then make use of that transparency? Would it actually help to order it in relation to other work? What would people get out of its inclusion on a backlog, which could not be achieved simply by reserving enough capacity to deal with it?