Let me start with the questions: Have you ever caught yourself in the situation where ...
- you(and your team) have to work on several projects at the same time?
- you don't know what to do first?
- you feel like there is too much work?
These are the questions I believe everyone has at least once in their career. I will share a scenario and how we solved them. So let's get started.
Scenario
A few months ago, my team had to work on 2 projects (with a couple of Requirement Workshop for other projects) simultaneously. We tracked each project on a separate Trello board. After a few sprints, we found ourselves overwhelming with the works and focus on personal tasks. By the end of the sprint, we were all so tired and worried about missing something. During our retrospective, we listed out our thought and feeling which turned out to be very similar. We then started to discuss and these are the outcome.
Problems
- Poor prioritization
- Ad hoc tasks
- No(multiple) projects overview
- And more...
The changes we made
After the discussion, we realized that we forgot one person, our Product Owner. The first thing we did was ask our Product Owner to prioritize the work for us. (we let the Scrum community down 😬) Then we created another Trello board(Team Board) for our team to increase team visibility and help everyone see the overview of the entire team. We also synced our personal calendar to our team calendar. With just a few changes, we already tackled two problems, 1. & 3. Now comes sneaky one, Ad hoc since this kind of task often comes as a small easy task (so naive 😌) we often grab it and try to get it done first when in reality these tasks cost a lot more time than we thought. We tackled this one by focus on the priority. Another thing that helps is the Daily Scrum, we try to make the most out of 15 minutes every day and keep everyone in synced.
Conclusion
If you found yourself(team) asking those questions then try these,
- prioritize your work
- see the project overview
- focus on the priority
- keep everyone in synced.
And remember
“Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I would also like to know how you guys deal with this problem.
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