How to perform Sprint Planning with Jira - Part 3: Using time with sub-tasks, Pros and Cons
Short Summary:
This video, part 3 of a series on Jira sprint planning, focuses on using time-based estimation with sub-tasks to create a sprint plan. It emphasizes accurate capacity planning to prevent teams from overcommitting. The speaker demonstrates a free spreadsheet method for capacity planning, shared with the team to track individual availability. The process involves breaking down product backlog items into time-estimated sub-tasks (sprint backlog items) within Jira, using a workload pie chart gadget to monitor team capacity, and considering the pros and cons of this time-based approach. The video highlights the importance of realistic estimations and addresses common team concerns about time-based estimation.
Detailed Summary:
The video is divided into three main parts:
Part 1: Determining Team Capacity:
This section stresses the importance of accurate capacity planning to avoid consistently incomplete sprint plans, leading to team demotivation and negative stakeholder perception. The speaker highlights that many teams neglect this crucial step. A free, downloadable Google Sheet is introduced as a solution. This spreadsheet allows team members to input their available hours for each day of the sprint, accounting for part-time work, commitments to other projects, meetings, and breaks. The speaker emphasizes the importance of realistic estimations, considering all factors that might impact team availability. The spreadsheet also optionally allows for tracking the time allocated to specific sub-tasks, providing a visual representation of remaining capacity. The speaker explicitly states, "don't replicate it, just listen to me," encouraging viewers to download the provided spreadsheet instead of recreating it.
Part 2: Sprint Planning Process in Jira:
This section details the process of creating a sprint plan within Jira. It assumes the product backlog items have already been clarified with the product owner. The process involves dragging prioritized product backlog items into the sprint and then creating sub-tasks (sprint backlog items) for each. The speaker demonstrates how to create sub-tasks in Jira, assign them to team members, and input time estimates (in hours) for each sub-task. Tips are given on sub-task granularity (2-hour blocks, half-day blocks, etc.), suggesting sub-tasks should ideally not exceed a day's work to facilitate daily scrum reviews and identify potential roadblocks. The importance of incorporating the "Definition of Done" (DoD) into sub-task creation is also highlighted.
Part 3: Pros, Cons, and Addressing Team Concerns:
This section discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the time-based sub-task approach. Pros include greater precision in sprint planning, increased likelihood of sprint completion (boosting team morale and stakeholder confidence), and the ability to track time spent versus estimated time for improved future estimations. Cons include the increased time investment required, potential pushback from teams perceiving it as micromanagement or anti-agile, and team discomfort with time estimations. The speaker offers strategies to address team discomfort, such as comparing estimations to previous similar tasks, ensuring sufficient detail in product backlog items, emphasizing that estimates are for planning, not punishment, and even temporarily removing estimates after sprint planning to build confidence. The speaker concludes by mentioning a future video on automating sub-task creation.