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Datastores: How we'll measure & communicate team performance

(WIP)

PHASE 0:

(started on 2020-Dec-14)

We will start by taking a snapshot of our epics and generating an estimation of when they will be approximately delivered, taking into account the team capacity, and the epic work estimation. To do that we had to break down every epic the Datastores team was executing (or was going to execute soon, "Up Next) in our Epic of Epics page, into issues that would represent all the work in scope for every Epic. From there every issue's work was estimated, using the /estimate Gitlab functionality. We'll adopt 2h as the minimum granularity for our issue work estimations.

PHASE I:

The Datastores team has documented how we work and do our Iteration Planning. From 2021-Jan-04 we will modify the process, adding the following steps:

  • From Tuesday to Friday before the start of the sprint, we'll estimate the work pending for EVERY ISSUE that will be brought to the next iteration. This covers two different sources:
    • Issues moved from the backlog or created into the current iteration.
    • Issues that were already waiting in the next iteration (coming from previous planning)
  • On Friday afternoon: We will check the new iteration, the team capacity and the total estimated work, making sure that the work is planned to the team capacity. We will correct our issue assignment - replanning if necessary.
  • During Friday/Monday: Update the final planning information in the planning issue (example).

TEAM METRICS:

After the 1st iteration on the above process (2021-Jan-18), we'll be able to start tracking these metrics, per iteration:

  1. Number of estimated days of work assigned to the team, vs. their capacity.
  2. Issues assigned vs issues closed.
  3. Estimated hours assigned vs closed.
  4. Number of Unplanned issues per milestone, vs total milestone issues.
  5. Number of issues moved to other iterations, due to inaccurate planning (or other).
    • We'll initially calculate it manually, counting # issues still open at the end of every iteration.

Additionally, on a quarterly basis we will track & communicate:

  1. Number of epics delivered per quarter.
  2. OKR status.
  3. Roadmap Progress.

COMMUNICATION:

  • A new issue will be created in this project every 2 weeks, named "Datastores team metrics - iteration WXX", summarising the team metrics per iteration. This will be shared with the Datastores team every start of iteration Monday. Example here: #2 (closed)
  • A new issue will be created in this project every quarter, sharing our OKR execution results.
  • A second issue will be created every a quarter, sharing our Quarter Team metrics: epics delivered, iteration metrics quarter summary, roadmap progress and more, mentioned above.

PHASE II:

From 2021-Feb-01:

  • Discuss the transition to Story Points with the team: https://softwarebrothers.co/blog/story-point-vs-hours/
  • If validated with the team: Start the Story Points estimation, per issue. Use the field "weight" for that.
  • To transition our capacity estimations from hours to story points, we can duplicate our estimates (hours and story points) during one iteration.
  • We'll do 2 iterations with our story points tracking system, to start refining team velocity.
  • Once the velocity is established, we'll move to estimate capacity based on Story Points.

(MORE COMING)

Edited by Alberto Ramos