A new team member drew an "ideal" straight line from the top left of the burndown chart to the end of the sprint on the bottom-right origin-line. Another team member asked why that straight line was IDEAL?
What's the "Ideal" burndown?
Just because some "agile" tool they have used in the past drew that "ideal" line, they thought that it helped the team to know if they were performing on target for the sprint. I was delighted that Julien questioned the meaning of the "ideal" line. I've never drawn such a lie upon my hand-drawn burndown charts and may have mentioned this anomaly (or ranted about its absurdity in a training workshop).
Julien explained that our team was willing to take work into the sprint that was some-what undefined, that we were accustomed to learning about the solution as we discovered the problem. And hence we often saw the task burndown rise before it curved down and we completed sprints. Julien thought that this learning was an expression of Just-In-Time requirements. We had a great relationship with our Product Owner and could negotiate these stories acceptance-criteria at the beginning of the sprint for one of these learning-stories. Therefore that straight line would represent 100% complete and understood stories with 100% tasked-out work; that was consumed by a machine that was 100% predictable. Our team of humans didn't wish to be that controlled.
We had a wonderful discussion of what a learning team was and how this was more ideal than a mechanistic structure that would be required to deliver perfect requirements every time. One team member wondered if we averaged all our burndown graphs since we had become a high-performing team would it approach an averaged straight line.
Julien brought up the fact that the short distance from point A to B might be a straight line - but in his kids, pine-wood derby contest the fastest track was not the straight track, but a particular curved track called isochronous curve (from Greek prefixes iso equal, chrono time) - SCIENCE! So did we want the shortest distance or the quickest path to burndown to done?
See Also:
What is an Agile Transition Guide?
The mysterious isochronous curve (video)
What's the "Ideal" burndown?
Just because some "agile" tool they have used in the past drew that "ideal" line, they thought that it helped the team to know if they were performing on target for the sprint. I was delighted that Julien questioned the meaning of the "ideal" line. I've never drawn such a lie upon my hand-drawn burndown charts and may have mentioned this anomaly (or ranted about its absurdity in a training workshop).
Julien explained that our team was willing to take work into the sprint that was some-what undefined, that we were accustomed to learning about the solution as we discovered the problem. And hence we often saw the task burndown rise before it curved down and we completed sprints. Julien thought that this learning was an expression of Just-In-Time requirements. We had a great relationship with our Product Owner and could negotiate these stories acceptance-criteria at the beginning of the sprint for one of these learning-stories. Therefore that straight line would represent 100% complete and understood stories with 100% tasked-out work; that was consumed by a machine that was 100% predictable. Our team of humans didn't wish to be that controlled.
We had a wonderful discussion of what a learning team was and how this was more ideal than a mechanistic structure that would be required to deliver perfect requirements every time. One team member wondered if we averaged all our burndown graphs since we had become a high-performing team would it approach an averaged straight line.
Julien brought up the fact that the short distance from point A to B might be a straight line - but in his kids, pine-wood derby contest the fastest track was not the straight track, but a particular curved track called isochronous curve (from Greek prefixes iso equal, chrono time) - SCIENCE! So did we want the shortest distance or the quickest path to burndown to done?
See Also:
What is an Agile Transition Guide?
The mysterious isochronous curve (video)
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