Ways of working
What are our Core Values?
- Collaboration: Foster a culture of open communication and collective problem-solving.
- Quality: Uphold high standards in our work, ensuring reliability and efficiency.
- Innovation: Embrace new ideas and technologies that help us improve our service offering.
- Transparency: Maintain clear visibility into our processes, decisions, and progress.
Team Roles
- Team Members: Comprising a mix of developers, data and platform engineers, responsible for the delivery of tasks and active participation in all Agile ceremonies.
- Product Manager (PM): Oversees the product backlog, ensuring it aligns with stakeholder needs and business objectives.
- Delivery Manager (DM): Facilitates the Agile process, removing blockers and ensuring timelines are met.
Communication and Delivery
- Stand-ups: A quick get-together to share progress updates.
- Ceremonies: How we make sure our team stays aligned as we work to deliver during Agile Sprints.
Continuous Improvement
- Actively seek feedback from all team members and stakeholders
- Review and update our Ways of Working as necessary to reflect our evolving process and learnings
Ceremonies
Schedule
This team uses three week sprints. This is our timeframe for planning, executing, and reviewing work. Note that standups are only on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
The team has the following ceremonies:
| Ceremony | Occurence | Day | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stand up | Daily | Wednesday - Friday | 10:45 - 11:00 |
| Sprint review | Weekly | Tuesday | 10:30 - 11:00 |
| Discuss the thing | Weekly (optional) | Tuesday | 15:00 - 15:45 |
| Sprint planning | Every 3 weeks | Tuesday | 13:00 - 14:00 |
| Show & tell | Fortnightly | Thursday | tbd |
| Sprint retrospective | Every 3 weeks | Thursday | 11:00 - 12:00 |
| Social stand up | Weekly | Monday | 10:30 - 11:00 |
We also have an architecture and high-level design meeting on the first Wednesday of each month at 14:00.
Stand up
Our stand-ups run daily at 10:45 and last for fifteen minutes.
We use Microsoft Teams and follow one of two formats:
Walk the board
- Starting with the “Done” column we discuss any active issues on our GitHub Project Board.
Yesterday, today, blocked
- A round robin of each team member discussing their issues and any blockers.
Standup is run by either the PM, DM, or whoever wants to run it.
Ad-hoc discussions may spin out from stand-up. These should take place after the meeting ends if time allows, or should be arranged for the next available time.
Sprint review
Ticket by ticket inspection on the current sprint.
Discuss the thing
Purpose
This is an optional meeting for member of the Find MOJ Data team to discuss a relevant item, gather opinions or playback something they have been working on recently.
Typical examples
- Sharing a research insight
- Gathering thought on design mock ups
- Sharing New ways of working
- Talking through a technical change or new software feature
- Showcasing a general piece of work you have done during the sprint.
If you have an item to discuss please add to the schedule, if there are no items for discussion we will remove from the Calendar.
Show and tell
In this session we show new features developed for the catalogue, outputs of user research and service design, technical decisions and challenges, among other things.
The sessions are shared with Analytical Platform so that we can share knowledge and provide a consistent offer.
Audience
Currently only an internal team audience.
Sprint planning
Purpose
Sprint Planning is where we figure out what work we want to commit to for the next sprint. It’s where we:
- Discuss and align on the goals for the upcoming sprint
- Select stories from the refined backlog, ensuring a shared understanding of scope and objectives
- Define the sprint goal
- Define the sprint backlog
Process
- Discussion: Discuss the stories in the refined backlog, ensuring a shared understanding of scope and objectives, including any work carried from last sprint
- Highlighting: Highlight stories and spikes that are significant to delivery of the sprint goal
- Capacity Estimation: Estimate the capacity of the team for the sprint, and assess whether the tickets brought in match that
- Sprint Backlog: Select the stories that will be brought into the sprint, and assign them to team members where appropriate
Output
- Ensure everyone has stories that they feel they can work on
- Ensure everyone has a shared understanding of the tasks to deliver this sprint
Sprint retrospective
At the end of the sprint, we:
- Reflect on the sprint’s process, celebrating successes and identifying opportunities for improvement
- Review the process, not the stories
- Define how we could improve
- Share kudos (praise) and feedback
Social stand up
Free time for a chat around non-work related stuff.