Tracking work

How each team plans and commits to work may vary slightly, but consider the tools that we use to be communication tools that help us collaborate better.

Tracking Tools

We tend to use Azure DevOps to track progress, organize work, and collaborate.

Stories/Backlog items

Don't expect the backlog to be filled out with "requirements" by someone else before you can work, it's everyone's responsibility to work together to ensure the team has the necessary information to proceed.

Remember that stories are created as placeholders for conversations that will happen and include business, design, and technical perspectives. Initially they are a simple idea on what could be built so that it can be prioritized.

As items get closer to being worked on, it's your team's responsibility to ensure that those conversations happen and you have enough information to build a feature.

For the items that you've fleshed out and begun working on, a couple of habits are valuable for improving team communication:

Keeping statuses up to date

Keeping item status updated ensures that those looking at the project can understand what the team is working on and prevents multiple people from accidentally working on the same thing.

Filling in acceptance criteria

Ensuring acceptance criteria are up to date is one of the single most valuable things you can do regularly to ensure that:

• you have a reasonable definition of done and can decide when to consider a story resolved
• team members can understand expectations and test or create test cases
• those following after can look back when bugs arise and understand how the feature was intended to work