ERM Development Team Updates

Owned by Jag Goraya
Last updated: Jul 23, 2020
2 min read

The ERM Development team is a remote and widely distributed development team, with members available for different hours and with variable working patterns.

As a result, we use specific methods to aid communication and to help focus our delivery effort:

  • Slack for daily asynchronous progress updates
  • Jira for contextually relevant issue queries and clarifications (supported by Slack calls and conversation threads)
  • Video call for weekly team planning and review

Development team leads are responsible for making sure that update reminders, Jira issues and team meetings are in place to support good communication.

All team members are responsible for providing timely updates and contributions in the relevant formats.

Daily Slack Updates

Aims:

  • to get a clear picture of what team members are working on, and with as minimal overhead as possible.
  • identify specific blockers or dependencies for the allocated work.
  • free up time for more effective weekly team calls.

Led by: Scrum Master via Slack reminders

Contributors: all ERM delivery team members


Weekly Team Calls

Requires Update

This section needs to be updated to reflect a revised team call pattern that has been introduced to align better with 2-week sprint cycle.

Aims: focus on development workflow, delivery context and team deliverables

Led by: Scrum Master

Contributors: all ERM delivery team members

Currently the team calls are on Wednesday afternoons, following usergroup calls. Timing may change to better align with FOLIO sprint cadence and review.

Call Scope

  • Weekly dev team calls will focus less on progress updates, and more on delivery workflow (including sprint planning and software review):
    • allocating user stories that are ready for development (Scrum Master / Lead Dev)
    • clarifying story outcomes and constraints (Product Owner / UX Lead)
    • demo of WIP & shipped development (Developers)
  • Detailed technical task planning for allocated stories will happen outside of team calls (led by Lead Dev).
  • Backlog grooming (owned by Product Owner), story estimating (Scrum Master / Lead Dev) and sprint retrospectives (Scrum Master) will also happen outside of team calls.

Standing Agenda

  1. Introductions
    1. Attendee / Apologies
    2. Upcoming Availability
  2. Current Sprint Review (Scrum Master / Team Members)
    1. Deliverable Status
    2. Internal Demo
  3. Next Sprint
    1. Sprint Focus / Backlog Priorities (Scrum Master)
    2. Story Assignment
      1. Story Allocations (Scrum Master / Lead Dev)
      2. Requirement Clarifications (Developers / Product Owner / UX Lead)
    3. Technical Followups (Dev / Lead Dev)
  4. After Next Sprint (Product Owner)
    1. Usergroup Update
    2. Backlog Grooming Focus
  5. Other Matters (Scrum Master)
  6. AOB (All)

JIRA Updates & Slack 'Card Conversations'

Aims: capture issues and decisions relating to user stories or features in the right delivery context

Led by / Contributors: all ERM delivery team members, as needed

  • Jira should be used to capture questions and clarifications for the issue in context.
  • If a conversation relating to an issue happens in Slack, summarise or copy any resolution or outstanding queries into Jira.
    • Use the #erm-developers Slack channel for project calls
    • Give calls a meaningful name (eg, relating to the issue)
  • Use threaded conversations in Slack to avoid the timeline disappearing too quickly and keep context.