Agile at Watchy. We plan sprint for 2 weeks time and we set primary deliverable for work. We use Asana for tracking tasks. To go with the planning we follow

Retrospect of the previous sprint

It is the first part of the planning. This brings out the cause of failure or success and improvements. In retrospection, the team has written down the cause of failure/success of the last activity and improvements from the last task and improvements for the next task within 5 min. After 5 mins, the discussion happens on the white board and recorded in Asana.

Setting primary deliverable of the sprint 

We set only one primary deliverable. At the end of every task, a new version of the ZifiLink artifacts is tested and released.

Scrub tasks from previous sprint, bugs, backlogs

This is the part where the tasks are selecting and assigning to the team member for the current assignment. Tasks are taken from the previous incomplete task list, bugs, and backlogs. Backlogs are a new feature, enhancement changes, supportive feature, new tasks. We have only taken primary deliverable from the current sprint. Equally important tasks put in the next sprint.

Committed days

It is calculated after assigning tasks. Individuals have to provide their available days for the current sprint. Committed days excludes leaves and non-sprint tasks. Non-sprint tasks are meetings, live streaming event, customer support, critical tasks, interviews.

Sample,
Date: 28 Jan 2015 – 14 Feb 2015 = 16 days(including sprint planning[1])
Committed days: SX-11, CV-10, VV-12.5, SU-12, RA-8.5, SV- 14= 68 days
Non sprint task days: SX-5, CV-0, VV-0, SU-1, RA-0, SV- 1 = 7 days
Planned/(Unplanned+Sick) leaves: SX-0/0, CV-0/0, VV-3.5/1 , SU-3/0 , RA- 7/0, SV-1/0 = 15.5/1 days
Final committed days = Committed days – (unplanned+sick) = 68 – 1 = 67 days
[1] One day is taken from the committed days for sprint planning and retrospect. So every individual minuses one from individual commitment days while calculating for tasks.

Only 67 days spent for the sprint from 68 days of commitment.

Task time calculation

By understanding the complexity of the tasks, the individual has to assign time for each task. Also, the individual makes sure the time assigned to all the tasks doesn’t exceed the committed days. These are rough calculations of time. Later, the time would be adjusted among the tasks. While calculating the time for the dependent task, members of the task should allocate same time.

Remember, 

  • No adding of new tasks in middle of the sprint unless it is critical
  • Prior planning of dependent tasks is crucial
  • Shout loud when a task takes more time
  • Cry loud when you need help
  • Communicate properly
  • Plan as per the availability of time.
  • If more task and less time, put yourself in turbo mode and work like an owl. Beers and RedBull are on Watchy.