Re[2]: BLOG on "How do Scrum and Critical Chain compare? "

MC> One thing I will sometimes do differently from "by the book" Scrum is,
MC> as you point out, look at task (story) dependencies. However, I don't do
MC> that for critical chain planning. Rather, I do it to avoid achieving a
MC> local optimization to the work of a sprint. Suppose a sprint includes 26
MC> things to do, labeled a through z. They can be done in any order except
MC> a, b, and c must be done in order. As a ScrumMaster I train the team to
MC> look for sequences like that and make sure they start those types of
MC> tasks as early as possible in a sprint. There are normally very few of
MC> these in a sprint so this is a pretty small change and it's really just
MC> how we think about the work of a sprint. However, it helps avoid a
MC> situation where the sequential tasks a, b, c are all left for the last
MC> day and even though there are three developers and three days left of
MC> work we just can't do the work in one chronological day.

One thing that I get a real kick out of when I work with new teams is
showing them how software related sequencing dependencies are an illusion.
If you can define an interface, you can work in parallel.  That just
leaves tooling tasks where someone is going to use something developed
earlier in an iteration to do additional work in an iteration.  As
much as possible, I like to get teams to finesse those by having someone
sign for both the creation and the use.

It's hard medicine, but I really like to push it because I run into
teams all the time who believe that they have sequencing dependencies
when they really don't.



Michael Feathers
www.objectmentor.com