What to track in Scrum
January 9, 2010
A CEO of an expansion stage software company that’s adopting some aspects of Scrum asked me this week:
“Should I track everything we do in Pivotal Tracker (www.pivotaltracker.com)?If not, why?”
My response was that some people say: “if you’re spending time on it, track it!” Period.
Other people, including me, say that Scrum is not about micromanagement or tracking all your work or getting “everything” done. Scrum is about getting product work done in
a self-organized way.
Specifically, it’s about having a product backlog defining the product in prioritized items,
and getting those done. Everything else is just a reduction in your ability to get that done quickly (the velocity).
The sprint velocity number implicitly takes the time to complete the other work into account.
So when you ask, “what are your impediments? Why didn’t you get more done on that feature?” and the software developer says, “I had this chore, or that chore”, it forces the development and the senior management teams to try to determine if that chore really needs to get done, and how to eliminate it altogether, if possible, thus increasing velocity.