My rule of thumb for Task work – and one I highly recommend
Teams adopt as a part of their Team Working Agreement – is as follows: Every Team Member’s name appears on one and
only one in-progress, unblocked Task at a time.
This rule does not preclude multiple Team Members from
working on the same Task. It does
preclude any Team Member from signing up for or attempting to work on more than
one Task at time. And that’s the point. Single-item flow is the most effective,
most efficient way known to develop a product.
This example (partial) task board shows the task heuristic in operation
The result of this simple rule is that no one is working on
more than one Task at once, meaning no one is attempting to engage in
multitasking. Another result of this simple rule is that Tasks not yet in
progress are available, by virtue of the fact that they live in the To Do
column on the Task Board, for any Team Member to work on, until one or more
Team Members sign up for the Task. This simple visual cue helps the Team see
what needs to be worked on and also helps drive cross-functional behavior on
the Team by making it physically possible for anyone to sign up for any
available Task.
Excerpt from The Agile Team Handbook, page 139.
All for now....
..._._
