Troubleshooting

Stories are not finished within sprints

Since Scrum encourages teams to be autonomous, the velocity of the next sprints tends to decrease if the schedule is unrealistic. This is unavoidable in cases where the team is clearly not skilled enough, but if velocity is simply decreased every time this issue occurs, the productivity of the team will be lowered further than necessary.

Below are examples of points that can be reviewed to increase velocity in the next sprint.

  • Are the end conditions of the story suitable?
  • Is the team being distracted by individual work that is outside the set format?
  • Is there any work (preparation of XX, etc.) that isn’t being designated as a task?
  • Are too many impediments building up and creating too much of a psychological burden?

The product manager must take the initiative to write code to help the team, without hesitation. It is arguably more productive if the product manager is involved in pair programming rather than simply reviewing what others have created.

A task was found to be missing from the story

Team members should not decide by themselves that the work cannot be completed if that task is not done. The matter should be escalated to the product manager.

The following options are possible.

  • Switch the tasks and implement the new task in this sprint.
  • Add the task to the product backlog and execute it in a later sprint.
  • The concern that the task is missing may be unfounded.