I am currently in a sprint (two week) where the designer is tasked with defining the requirements and UX of a particular user story.In the same sprint I am to implement this design. During sprint planning I had to take a wild guess as to how long this undefined user story would take.Today I finally received the design. Unfortunately the design is incomplete/vague and is more akin to a clients requirements than a design. However from this I can still see that I have not nearly estimated enough.To make matters worse this is not the first time. In the last sprint the exact same thing happened. I flagged it in our retrospective and the scrum master did not have an answer of how to solve this, instead saying that's just development for you. Ironically he gets annoyed if the burn down is not on target...Now I am going to have to ask/work with the designer to get his job done. This is going to hold me up as I have completed all my other tasks.So my question is A) how do you handle dependencies in sprint planning? EDIT: Is it ok for the design/UX of user story to occur in the same sprint as implementation B) how should I now approach the sprint? Re-estimate the current user story and watch the burndown turn into a burn up and be viewed as incompenent/unproductive? Or add a new task to the current sprint along the lines of help the designer create a suitable design
Scrum: Is it ok for the design/UX of user story to occur in the same sprint as implementation
agile;scrum;planning
how do you handle dependencies in sprint planning?Ideally, non-development dependencies are handled before sprint planning, so that you have a good definition of the backlog item to estimate effort against.But, if that was just development for you last sprint, then that was probably going to be just development for you this sprint, so you should really have increased your estimate there and then on upcoming tasks that are in a similar state. This is not being vindictive, and it would be a mistake to let it come over as such.What it does is shows the uncertainty of estimation without a relatively solid design to estimate against. Perhaps, this will encourage your managers to make sure that a product backlog item is properly defined; but at worst it will cover your back. No one complains when a job come in under-budget.However, you didn't do that, and now your question is ...how should I now approach the sprint?The whole purpose of Scrum as a project management tool is to identify problems early, which you've done. Flag it up to your management, let them decide what to do with the sprint. If they try to blame you, be humble and ask how they suggest you approach similar situations in future, to avoid the same problem, even if you don't truly believe that it's fair.At the end of the day, these are project management issues, and if you try to solve them within your own bubble, you're setting yourself up to fail. And, when you do, you'll be angry because it'll fall on you, not on the managers who failed to solve the problem when you flagged it up to them.