Should You Limit the Size of Work Brought Into a Sprint? w/ Scott Sehlhorst & Andrew Young

In this episode of SoundNotes, we tackle the question of whether or not it's a good idea for the Development Team to limit the size of work brought into a Sprint. Many teams consider this to be a valuable practice during Sprint Planning or when creating a Definition of Ready. The goal is to make sure that the Development Team is not committing work into a Sprint that they cannot complete during the course of a Sprint. This often shows up as something like “Nothing bigger than an 8” (for teams using Fibonacci to estimate User Story Points). While this practice can be valuable for the Development Team, it also has an impact on the Product Owner and how they prepare work for Sprint Planning.

During the podcast, LeadingAgile SVP and Executive Consultant, Scott Sehlhorst and Senior Consultant Andrew Young talk with Dave about whether or not this practice actually helps and how it can become an impediment for the Product Owner who is trying to plan out work for the Release.

Note from Dave:

This conversation was very impactful for me in terms of how I think about “ready” and how I think about the work done by the PO in getting ready for the Sprint. Limiting the size of work brought into a Sprint has always been something I have advocated for because I think it helps the Development Team, but I’ve never taken the time to think about how it might create challenges for the PO, who may be far more concerned about the Release than the Sprint.

Links from the Podcast

• Ron Jeffries on Story Points and Ideal Time https://ronjeffries.com/articles/019-01ff/story-points/Index.html
• Mike Cohn on Story Points https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/what-are-story-points
• Kenny Rubin on Definition of Ready https://innolution.com/blog/definition-of-ready
• Why We Use Fibonacci Number to Estimate Story Points (Jeff Sutherland) https://www.scruminc.com/why-do-we-use-fibonacci-numbers-to-estimate-user-stories/
• Probabilistic Forecasting Interview with Troy Lightfoot https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/54062/Probabilistic-Forecasting-with-Troy-Lightfoot
• No BS Estimation Cards https://estimation.lunarlogic.io

Contacting Scott Sehlhorst

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/scott-sehlhorst/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sehlhorst
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sehlhorst/
• Blog: http://tynerblain.com/blog/

Contacting Andrew Young

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/andrew-young/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atyoung/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/exclamation101
• Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
• Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/