How we perform Agile at RentSpree as a growing startup
Introduction / Agile
Agile and Startup are two words that are often heard together. But how often do you hear people talk about how they are executed in the company or what kind of mindset or attitude does it required?
In RentSpree, we have brew up an agile process that still evolving to adjust to an expanding startup company. The process starts with an environment of openness within the teams and office space. The teams consist of 5–6 team members that run a 2 weeks sprint to develop and ship products. The member has a qualitative over quantitative mindset both in soft and hard skills helping to not just reach the number or finish their tasks but go beyond their commitment. As we always keep in our blood that “Great just isn’t good enough”
Key Points:
- Open floor office
- 2 weeks sprint
- Epic, User Story, and sub-tasks
- Commitment
- Qualitative over Quantitative mindset
Team structure
RentSpree’s team consists of passionate and motivated members and is built base on a domain-driven approach that broke the team into a specific domain of the company. A clearer image is produced of the expertise and responsibility to the team; consisting of a scrum master, 3 to 5 developers, and 1 to 2 product designers.
Agile Manifesto said:
Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.
This is true in our structure as the team consists of expert that had chosen to work on their specific domain. Therefore, the company trusts them to develop new values for the company and able to solve problems with their expertise. This also gives a faster pace to decide which team does what and who should a specific epic be assigned to.
Meeting / Process?
Sprint Planning: At the beginning of every sprint, there is a meeting called Sprint Planning to evaluate the backlog and weight the user story, and decide which one of them should go into the sprint and who will be the assignee of the task.
The process starts with a backlog that has been prioritized then we analyze the first user story and decide how much it weighs by using scrum-poker, a tool using the Fibonacci point approach from 0, 0.5, 1, 3, 5, 8, and so on. This gives a better scale to estimate points and able to see if we need to break the task into smaller ones.
After user story has been estimated, the assignee break tasks in the user story, giving a better way to manage their time and resource and at the same time during the sprint other people can come and help do their task of the user story.
Before starting the sprint, the team decides a goal that can be related to the sprint, task, team, or even company-wide that has to be accomplished. This can be the focus of the sprint that is not work-related such as a goal of getting to know every new team member.
Key Points:
- Planning a Sprint
- Scrum-Poker
- Jira
- Epic, User Story, and sub-tasks
- Sprint Goal
Developing Time: It’s the part of “Running” in the sprint where engineer starts developing using a scrum board to keep track of their work between engineer and product designer. The engineer will primarily work on the user story meanwhile the product designer would be the one testing the user story to see if they are up to the standard and follow the definition of done or it will be rejected.
Backlog Refinement: It’s a meeting that happens during the sprint where the team checks the backlog and briefly analyzes and discusses any issue then prioritizes the work. This will help during the main Sprint Planning phase by having everyone understand the backlog and able to weigh the tasks with a certain amount of knowledge of it.
InnoSpree: A Tech meeting where all the tech lead discusses ideas, issues, and collaborations of technology and ideas. The communication within the meeting is meant for collaboration of large or cross squad’s impact feature, and also the system architect direction and coordination. Another aspect of InnoSpree is innovation and research that affect the company are approved or start within it. All people involve would use their experience or research further to help move forward.
Product Design Kanban: A meeting where all product designers would join and keep in touch on what every squad is doing.
Epic Grooming: An epic in RentSpree referred to as a new big feature that required deeper analysis. In Epic Grooming, the epic has been designed and ready to be implemented. In this session, happen to debrief everyone on the scope of the feature and its’ user story, so all member can understand the epic and have an open discussion. Therefore, when Sprint Planning happens everyone will be ready to estimate the user story point.
Review
Sprint Review:
Revising the product that has been built in the sprint and reflects the user story and what needs to be done next
Retrospective Meeting:
- It’s a meeting where it gives the opportunity for everyone to share their thought, feeling, or anything that happens during the sprint that went well, or went wrong among the squad. This gives transparency to the individual and where they stand. After, the sharing the squad would try a way to find an action to make things better or just note and adapt if something went well.
“Be open-minded and straightforward — RentSpree’s core value”
- One aspect of the retrospective meeting it’s everyone involves following one of the core values of RentSpree, “Be Open-minded and straightforward”. Everyone is open to praised or giving constructed criticism as everyone understands the benefits for us and how important it’s for us to grow and improve ourselves. Therefore, feedbacks are extremely welcome and the professionalism of everyone at RentSpree can separate between job and personal life.
- Parabol Tool to write what went well, what could have done better, and shot out.
Did you like how we work? Why not just join us at RentSpree
