There seems to be a current trend where organizations that say they are doing PI planning or quarterly planning are making a decision for the teams about what must be delivered in the time box. The teams just accept the commitment because they either feel they do not have the agency to push back and say no to some of it or are too busy trying to finish up their last overcommitment to look at new work. So, they begin the new time box already behind and then assess the new work only to (shockingly) learn it is too much. Then they divide it up by the number of Sprints or weeks and that is how they plan out how to get it all done. Most of the time this results in developing a habitual practice of carrying work from one sprint to the next, continually trying to recover from the last overcommitment so they can get to work on the new overcommitment.

 

In this episode, The Agile Bear, Nigel Baker, joins me to sort through why this is happening, the harm it causes, and ways to fix it.

Video Version

If you'd prefer to view the video version of this interview: http://tinyurl.com/2eu5yucw

Contacting Nigel

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/nigelebaker