Work Cycles
Development Rhythm
Our team works in a 3 week rhythm. Work cycles are two-weeks long, and every third week is a planning and spin-down week.
The goal of planning and spin-down week is to recognize the time it takes to strategically identify and specify tickets, give us a chance to have more strategic meetings, and work on research that might be hard to fit in at other times.
The following table represents our cycle-related meeting schedule. Each meeting will be described below.
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planning & Spin-Down | Wrap-up | Cycle Planning | Standup | Standup | Standup |
| Work Cycle (Week 1) | Standup | Standup | Standup | Standup | Standup |
| Work Cycle (Week 2) | Standup | Standup | Standup | Standup | Standup |
Meetings
Work Cycle Planning
Occurs Tuesday at 3:00 PM eastern of Planning & Spin-Down week. Participants are members of DLS and the product owner for the upcoming project.
Goals
- Review the Work Cycle Board and determine the tickets which will be undertaken in the next two weeks. Give them the ‘work-cycle’ label, ensure they’re well specified, and move them to Ready.
- If this is a feature sprint, PO will identify one ticket which is a meaningful enhancement to an existing feature for users. Give it the work-cycle label.
Work Cycle Board: Zenhub
Standup
Occurs daily at 4:00 PM Eastern when there isn’t also a Cycle Planning or Wrap-up meeting. Participants are members of DLS.
Goals
- Determine if anyone’s work is blocked.
- Connect with the team.
- Find pairing opportunities for the next work day.
Work Cycle Wrap-up
Occurs Monday following the last week of the work cycle at 3:00 PM. Participants are members of DLS and the product owner for the current project.
We moved this meeting from Friday to make it easier for team members to take off Fridays for vacation.
Goals
- Determine if the work cycle was a success or if another cycle needs to happen.
- Share a demo if necessary, but the assumption is that product owners have been testing features as they’ve been implemented.
- Review the Work Cycle Board
- Specify any sudden priorities that have been defined and move them to Ready
Honeybadger Stampede
Occurs weekly every Tuesday from 3:30 PM to 4:00 PM. Participants are members of DLS.
Goals
- Improve the stability of our software and our ability to react to exceptions as a team in a low-stress ensemble environment.
- Browse Honeybadger exceptions that have occurred in the last week.
- Ticket any exceptions that should have notified us via monitoring instead of Honeybadger - e.g. Postgres is down.
- Look together at any exceptions that are unexpected or may point to us needing to do work - ticket those.
Team Time
Occurs Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 11 AM to 1:00 PM and 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM Eastern.
Goals
- Provide a blocked off area where our team is all free from other commitments to work at the same time, ensemble, meet suddenly, or just generally focus on tasks directly related to our team goals.
Retrospectives
DLS holds regular retrospectives to reflect on our accomplishments and challenges, and to discuss any changes we may want to make to team process. Retrospectives are scheduled every 6-8 weeks.