How to handle sprints when things are blocked on partners (third parties)
Hi,
We fibonacci estimate our tasks, do planning and then we have 2 weeks sprints. It works perfect for us when the tasks we have depend only on us.
The problem is that we also need things done from partners to implement, and these different partners are unpredictable: they could finish a task in a day or in a week or in a month. These are tasks that our partners need to do (so in theory they shouldn't go in the sprint, right?), but some of our team members have to follow up on these tasks: nag, communicate, ask what the status of the tasks are, push them, etc. Also when they finish the task someone of our team has to test it. How can we track this effort that WE make from our partner's tasks?
What we do for now is create tasks like "Follow up PartnerX and test" and estimate accordingly. Those tasks are going to be blocked until our partners do their part, so they can be blocked for many sprints. Is that okay? Does it make sense to track this tasks if they don't really live in our sprint workflow? Should we be having tasks about following up with partners?
Any help is appreciated! Thanks.
Amina.
We use Jira BTW, and some team members and very against having different boards because then we lose visibility on what we are waiting for or following up.
A Scrum Development Team should have all of the skills and resources needed to create a Done increment. Without that, their ability to frame a commitment will be compromised, and the team would be within their rights to refuse to do such work in the first place.
If the partners you describe are drawing work from the same Product Backlog, such that the dependencies are between backlog items, then the teams could control and minimize them through a Nexus.
Sounds good. We can easily not put things in the sprint that don't depend on us. What about tracking the communication? Is daily communication and following up something that should be a sprint task?
Thanks!
Amina, if your team is not accepting (forecasting) items that they cannot complete on their own (dependent upon another team, 3rd party vendor, etc.), then there is nothing to follow up on.
If the team coordinates such dependencies with other teams (i.e. - Nexus) in order to get cross-team alignment on objectives, that can work, but the "task" of communicating with other parties around status (i.e. - chasing) is definitely something that should not be tracked or measured in any way, same as not measuring/tracking Scrum ceremonies. It's just part of the framework/process.
> but the "task" of communicating with other parties around status (i.e. - chasing) is definitely something that should not be tracked or measured in any way, same as not measuring/tracking Scrum ceremonies.
It could be managed by the Development Team.
Yes, Nexus could be used here; however, so could Scrum with Kanban as the Kanban board could have a third party column that it outside of the sprint columns.
Another approach would be to work with the 3rd parties in order to help them implement scrum.
At the very least, your organisation should have a sit down with these 3rd parties in order to understand why they take so long and for them to understand that they are causing impediments for your sprints.
They will either be happy for your help to get lean processes implemented, or you should start looking for 3rd partied that will.