Blog post: process

[marcoow]

Our process actually would make a good blog post:

• why/how iterations are a team effort and the team consists of all stakeholders (product, design, marketing, engineering)
• iteration planning needs input from all stakeholders to define a reasonable set of issues (no one stakeholder party dictates what needs to be worked on)
• "sprint" is a bad term and leads to a bad way of thinking (we're not rushing to punch out features which might lead to the necessity for "cool down sprints" - the iteration contains both the feature and what others would do in a "cool down sprint", a feature is only done if there's no left over cleanup work)
• rotating iteration lead results in shared ownership of the process and no single person dictating it
• proper planning, which includes discussion of all issues in the iteration requires upfront thinking and everyone having the chance to give their input (which often leads to discovering previously unthough-of implications of changes etc.)
• in the end, iterative process is about providing some level of insight into progress for stakeholders but also smooth execution of work
• iterations are no final commitment from either stakeholder but a snapshot of what everyone involves are the most important issues to work on at the time of planning - changing a sprint after planning is sometimes necessary and welcome (if it is agreed by stakeholders that it makes sense)