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Picture the scene, a business is thinking about using the Scrum methodology for agile development. They have implemented the Scrum for Team Systems and everyone is very happy with it. However the business wants to capitalise their development cost and have asked for Scrum backlog work item template to be modified to include the time taken to do the task. The idea being that they need to know how much time a developer spent doing productive work I.E. how much time they spent adding new features.
The problem that some people in the business have with this (including myself) is that recording how mush time you have spent on something kind of defeats the object of Scrum. All I want to know from a lead developer point of view is that we have this much time to do this much work. We record how much time is left on the task and we can see how far we are away from meeting our objectives.
Maybe I am missing the point? You tell me. If however someone out there knows a way in which we can work without recording the exact amount of time we spent doing something and still please the people that invest the money then your answer would be much appreciated.
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The cost of an Agile project is simple the fixed cost per sprint multiplied by the number of sprints we think the project will take … so easy it can be done on the back of an envelope!
Agile allows us to adjust our approach after every iteration, adding small pieces to the software, like building blocks. Due to their dynamic nature, agile projects can be difficult to estimate in terms of time and budget. Since priorities can change, the estimates will often change as well.
As a development manager, I am both interested in making sure that development runs smoothly (via Scrum) and that time is accounted for per project so we know where we are spending our money (Time Tracking).
Therefore, during a sprint team members are asked to update the amount of time remaining on outstanding tasks to compute the burndown chart. It should not take more than a couple of minutes. Since we are using Scrum, the team decides on the tasks and I don't care who is doing what as long as we have a burndown chart.
I also ask them to track their time per project and this is not very detailled. I don't want to track every minute of their time. This information is used to get a feel for how long it takes to release a version or much money goes into developing a product.
Since we are using Scrum time tracking is very simple since all members of a team work on the same project for long period of time.
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