Our Ceremonies
The NVVS DevOps team has the following regular ceremonies. The faciltator of the ceremonies is rotated within the team, to offer everyone a chance to speak, offer a fresh perspective and develop professionally.
| Ceremony | Occurence | Day | Time | Calendar Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stand Up | Daily | Monday - Friday | 09:30 - 09:45 | Click for Team Calendar |
| Sprint Planning | Bi-Weekly | Wednesday | 09:30 - 10:30 | Click for Team Calendar |
| Dev Refinement | Weekly | Tuesday | 10:00 - 12:00 | Click for Team Calendar |
| Backlog Refinement | Weekly | Thursday | 14:00 - 15:00 | Click for Team Calendar |
| Backlog Grooming | Weekly | Monday | 10:30 - 11:00 | Click for Team Calendar |
| Sprint Retrospective | Bi-Weekly | Tuesday | 13:00 - 14:00 | Click for Team Calendar |
| Learn Tech | Weekly | Friday | 13:30 - 16:30 | Click for Team Calendar |
Stand Up
Our stand-ups run daily at 09:30 and last for fifteen minutes. We will follow one of two formats:
Walk The Board
Starting with the “Done” column we discuss any active issues in GitHub via Jira
Yesterday, Today, Blockers
A round robin of each team member discussing their issues and any blockers.
Sprint Planning
Each Sprint is two weeks long and starts on a Wednesday. We use Jira to run a one-hour session. Template agenda below:
- Discuss the previous sprint and if we met our goal, did we achieve anything outside of our goal? (10m).
- Discuss issues at the top of the backlog and add sticky notes for a potential sprint goal and any risks concerns (10m).
- Reveal all stickies and vote for your favourite 5 votes (2m).
- Discuss the top 3 goals and finalise a sprint goal (15m).
- Discuss and finalise any concerns (5m).
- Pull issues into the sprint.
- Any other business.
- Head to our-sprints, update the outcome of the previous sprint and add the goal for the next sprint. Ensure the
last-reviewed-dateis also updated.
Dev Refinement
On Tuesday mornings, the DevOps engineers get together to discuss tickets which need further technical refinement. This is done without the product team, to allow the conversation to go in depth technically and facilitate healthy challenge between the engineers, so that best solution to an issue can be found. We review tickets marked “DevRefinement” and change to “DevRefinementDone” when a conclusion has been met and the ticket is updated to reflect the outcome.
Every other week, we also discuss dependabots, identifying a repository to focus on for the next sprint and creating tickets to clearly differentiate what is in and out of scope. A dependabot request may be deemed out of scope if the work required is complex, therefore it will be done as an independent ticket.
Backlog Refinement
On Thursday afternoons we have a session on backlog refinement. The purpose of this ceremony is for the team to agree that any issues created have enough information for any other team member to pick up. Once a issue is refined we estimate it using the Fibonacci scale and vote using Agile Planning Poker.
Backlog Grooming
On Monday mornings we have a thirty-minute ceremony for ensuring the top of the ‘Ready for Development’ queue is prioritised. This ceremony is owned by the Product Managers and developers are welcome to attend to bring important issues to the discussion. The Product managers will often assign the label “DevRefinement” to a ticket if technical decisions are needed before backlog refinement later in the week.
Sprint Retrospective
At the end of each sprint we have a one-hour retrospective. This is for the team to openly discuss positives and negatives of the sprint. The format, using Metro Retro, is regularly changed to keep the retro fresh and effective.
Learn Tech
We allocate Friday afternoons to learning. This time could be spent using one of the companies resources such as Pluralsight, myLearning or any 3rd party course. Alternatively you may wish to spend the time looking into new technically or features that could benefit the team and our users. Lightning Talks and Demonstrations of any outcomes are greatly encouraged and welcomed.
Show & Tell
From time to time, we have a thirty-minute show and tell showcase to share with our colleagues and the wider organisation our achievements during the sprint. This is particularly pertinent following a technical spike, so that the new expertise can be shared with the team.
Example slide deck: Sprint 40