“With Scrum, Everyone should Work on Individual Tasks”
Are you Serious? — episode 69
The ‘Are you Serious’ series tackles Scrum misconceptions. All its articles have this theme and cover a specific topic.
On the second day of the Scrum Master training, I discussed Pair Programming. This concept of two people working together on the same thing wasn’t new to most. We shared mixed experiences with pairing. Some liked it very much. Others weren’t enthusiastic about it.
Then one of the participants said, “How can you do Pair Programming when everyone has to work on individual items?”
This remark sparked my curiosity. So I asked, “This is interesting Alberto. What do you mean with this?”
“Well, during Sprint Planning, we always determine who does what in a Sprint. We create individual items so that we can determine the priority of the work and have a view on the progress towards completion. I don’t see how Pair Programming fits into this.”
Wow.
With this, the next half an hour of the training went a different direction than I had foreseen. I had to connect the foundation of Scrum with how a Scrum Team organises the work during a Sprint.
