When working with service delivery, many teams work feels like it’s just unplannable. When moving to agile ways of working, some simple metrics will provide you with insights into what is truly planable and what isn’t.
Start collecting the following data over a few 2-3 Sprints. The data is key to understanding the nature of your team’s work.
The Retrospective is a key event to use to:
Ultimately, getting down to the root cause of why there is urgent, unplanned work is important to delivering value each Sprint. This is because plannable work has been prioritised by the Product Owner. Unplanned work removes the team’s focus from delivering that value.
The main reasons that unplanned work hits teams:
Many agile teams that work in service delivery, such as social media, design, finance and HR, find themselves reacting to customer’s urgent requests. This results in work of known value (plannable work) being put aside and the team constantly switching contexts to deliver.
To reduce being reactive requires improved relationships with stakeholders so they don’t leave engaging your team until the last minute: