Greater team autonomy
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 9:01 am
At the end of last year, during one of the Product community meetings in Recife, I had a conversation with Thyago Thompson Veras Oliveira, an agility specialist, and Avelino Alonso, technical leader at Clin, about the refinement ceremonies that occur throughout the sprint . One of Thyago’s words stuck in my mind: “Refinement is a ceremony for the technical team, the Product Manager is only advisory.”
Previously, our refinement ceremonies worked as follows:
I opened the board;
We would open one of the PBIs (Product Backlog Items) and I would quickly explain to the developers what we were developing, along with the acceptance criteria;
Based on this, the development team quickly discu belarus mobile phone number ssed what needed to be done and the degree of complexity;
At the end, the team estimated the effort and we moved on to the next PBI.
We identified the following main problems:
While we quickly discussed what needed to be done, we did not break down the PBIs into clear tasks;
Increased risk of overlooking complexities that needed more in-depth discussion, which could cause problems mid-sprint and affect effort estimation;
The team as a whole did not have a clear view of all the work needed to complete a task, which resulted in dependence on the developer responsible for the task, as the other team members did not understand the logical path that was being followed in the code;
The ceremony was very dependent on me, as Product Manager.
After talking with Avelino and Thyago, I started a transition process in our refinement. The first step was to start using refinement to discuss breaking each PBI into tasks . I explained to the developers that I wanted to change our refinement dynamics and why I wanted to do this. During this transition period, the developers discussed among themselves and listed the tasks , while I just created them on the board . The first impact I noticed was that, while before we refined 5 PBIs in an hour, it now took us 1 hour to refine only 1 or 2 PBIs.
I continued to conduct the refinements in this way for about 3 weeks, until the team became more familiar with the new dynamics. After this period, during one of the refinements, Avelino offered to lead the ceremony and detail the tasks even more with the team, instead of just writing their titles. We advanced one more level, starting to break the PBIs into extremely clear tasks , with illustrative drafts of communication between the parts of the application, definition of table structure, prints of each front-end component , among others. “Suddenly”, I was no longer so essential in the ceremony and the team gained more autonomy.
Main benefits
The main benefits of the approach described are:
More fluid sprints
With this new refinement, the team was able to map out previously unidentified complexities , which allowed for discussions on how to work around them. This allowed the team to address challenges more efficiently during the sprint. Additionally, since all team members were well-informed about the PBIs, their dependencies, and the work that needed to be done, if a developer started work on a PBI but had to leave, another team member could easily take over the work, ensuring continuity of activities .
With the PM acting only in an advisory role during refinement ceremonies, the team gained more autonomy to make decisions and move forward with sprint activities . This allowed the team to continue working even when I was away or busy with other responsibilities. As a result, the team felt more empowered and owned the task board, which improved sprint management and fostered a greater sense of accountability among team members.
Next steps
I believe there is still room for improvement in our process. One next area of improvement I plan to address is providing the team with more context about why we are developing a particular feature. In conversations with developers, they have expressed a desire to better understand why features and improvements are being prioritized.
During my interactions with Caio Brandão, Product Manager at Passei Direto, he shared an approach that I found to be amazing. Basically, he creates a PowerPoint presentation with well-structured topics, following a model suggested by Reforge, to present the context to the team. I intend to try this approach in the coming weeks.
Previously, our refinement ceremonies worked as follows:
I opened the board;
We would open one of the PBIs (Product Backlog Items) and I would quickly explain to the developers what we were developing, along with the acceptance criteria;
Based on this, the development team quickly discu belarus mobile phone number ssed what needed to be done and the degree of complexity;
At the end, the team estimated the effort and we moved on to the next PBI.
We identified the following main problems:
While we quickly discussed what needed to be done, we did not break down the PBIs into clear tasks;
Increased risk of overlooking complexities that needed more in-depth discussion, which could cause problems mid-sprint and affect effort estimation;
The team as a whole did not have a clear view of all the work needed to complete a task, which resulted in dependence on the developer responsible for the task, as the other team members did not understand the logical path that was being followed in the code;
The ceremony was very dependent on me, as Product Manager.
After talking with Avelino and Thyago, I started a transition process in our refinement. The first step was to start using refinement to discuss breaking each PBI into tasks . I explained to the developers that I wanted to change our refinement dynamics and why I wanted to do this. During this transition period, the developers discussed among themselves and listed the tasks , while I just created them on the board . The first impact I noticed was that, while before we refined 5 PBIs in an hour, it now took us 1 hour to refine only 1 or 2 PBIs.
I continued to conduct the refinements in this way for about 3 weeks, until the team became more familiar with the new dynamics. After this period, during one of the refinements, Avelino offered to lead the ceremony and detail the tasks even more with the team, instead of just writing their titles. We advanced one more level, starting to break the PBIs into extremely clear tasks , with illustrative drafts of communication between the parts of the application, definition of table structure, prints of each front-end component , among others. “Suddenly”, I was no longer so essential in the ceremony and the team gained more autonomy.
Main benefits
The main benefits of the approach described are:
More fluid sprints
With this new refinement, the team was able to map out previously unidentified complexities , which allowed for discussions on how to work around them. This allowed the team to address challenges more efficiently during the sprint. Additionally, since all team members were well-informed about the PBIs, their dependencies, and the work that needed to be done, if a developer started work on a PBI but had to leave, another team member could easily take over the work, ensuring continuity of activities .
With the PM acting only in an advisory role during refinement ceremonies, the team gained more autonomy to make decisions and move forward with sprint activities . This allowed the team to continue working even when I was away or busy with other responsibilities. As a result, the team felt more empowered and owned the task board, which improved sprint management and fostered a greater sense of accountability among team members.
Next steps
I believe there is still room for improvement in our process. One next area of improvement I plan to address is providing the team with more context about why we are developing a particular feature. In conversations with developers, they have expressed a desire to better understand why features and improvements are being prioritized.
During my interactions with Caio Brandão, Product Manager at Passei Direto, he shared an approach that I found to be amazing. Basically, he creates a PowerPoint presentation with well-structured topics, following a model suggested by Reforge, to present the context to the team. I intend to try this approach in the coming weeks.