Last minute requests in a sprint
We encounter situations when we have last minute requests from stakeholders. Remember at times, it could be various situations leading to that. As an example, some of the companies that I worked for went through organization restructing. That led to uncertainty in what our new management wanted. While we knew what our end-customer user wanted, it is sometimes chaos. Your management is still getting upto speed and as a result might launch newer intitatives, leading to change in priorities. At times, if an organization is so big that you get a note about an initiative much later in the game then what do you do?
1. Don’t get stressed out
Sometimes, our management might not be helpful in setting priorities and might just want us to generate value for customers. Don’t let the stress get to your team. If you know what your end customers want then continue with that. This is so that you get a logical ending before you start work on the new stuff.
2. Discovery and estimation
You need a small discovery worth few days. Work with your customer on discovery as to why it is important. Work with your team then on the estimation for the same. This will help you buy time for your team so that they wrap up their work before moving to this new goal.
3. Backlog Refinement
I am assuming that your sprint size is 2 weeks. Adjust the stories and spikes to be sized accordingly so that you can communicate sooner and set realistic expectations for your customer on when their requests will be available in production.
4. Priorization of the backlog
If the request makes sense then you need to prioritize the backlog. Your team has the same capacity and so it is important to adjust your backlog accordingly.
5. Reasoning why the request doesn’t make sense
There might reasons why the request might not make sense. For example, you can use analytics to prove why this makes sense. You need to work with the stakeholder for the same and explain the same.
Final Thoughts
There are different reasons why you might get last minute requests. Some are legit and others are not. You might want to evaluate if it makes sense. If it does then come up with a realistic delivery date. If it doesn’t then you need reasoning like data analytics to prove why it doesn’t make sense.