Estimating Tasks for Testers Part 2

Having tasks on a Scrum Board helps the development team visualise the work being done during the Sprint. This could either be a physical Scrum Board, where team members can simply write and pin papers to the board, or a digital Scrum Board, which can be accessed online from anywhere. Everyone can see which tasks are going beyond the estimated work hours, which tasks another development team member can help out on, and which tasks have impediments.

Task Impediments

Even if the Scrum team has added buffer hours or have considered spikes during Sprint Planning, impediments can still take place within the Sprint.

Impediments are a form of waste that keeps the development team from finishing their tasks. They could be technical difficulties, dependencies, outages, etc. These can come up as soon as someone experiences them during their work. Impediments can also be determined when the Scrum Master or anyone from development team sees a task that is taking longer than expected or as estimated.

For example, when a tester raised a question to the development team that needs further investigation, this question should be tacked to the Scrum Board. Another impediment for testing would be an outage of the test environment – this must also be made visible on the Scrum Board.

Impediments add hours to the team’s work and are considered to be part of the Sprint. They have corresponding tasks that aim to fix the issues or dependencies, and must also have estimates for how long it would take to finish them. Handling impediments is also part of the learning experience of the Scrum Team. They can help by knowing the product and process better, and can also improve task estimation during Sprint Planning and Product Backlog Refinement.

Conclusion on Estimating Tasks

Estimating tasks lets the Scrum team anticipate the work to be done and also learn how to estimate better in future Sprints. It is also important to track the actual’s in executing tasks as well as the impediments that come up within the Sprint. Visualising tasks in a Scrum Board makes the work transparent and allows everyone to understand and collaborate on each other’s tasks.

Scrum teams should aim to resolve impediments right away in order for the team to finish their tasks and, the user stories in the Sprint Backlog. After all, delivering software with Scrum is about delivering quality software on time.

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Our Book Recommendations

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