There's a phrase that a lot of agile trainers and coaches use that I think is very vital to understand when we talk about something like the daily scrum
and how the team does their work.
The phrase is stop starting, start finishing.
Now, many of you have probably heard that phrase before, but what do we mean by it?
What we means is it's very easy to begin something new.
but it takes discipline to actually carry something across the finish line.
If I'm a developer on a team and I finish up my work, It's easy for me to begin something new, but it's harder for to try to help my other teammates to
get something else across the finish line.
And that's what we would prefer, right?
We wanna get things actually over the finished line, so here's where I'll give you a tip that I have found to be very vital in helping teams to to Get
this dynamic of how they work together.
That is to institute what we call a whip limit on the work of the sprint.
That term, if you're not familiar with it, stands for work in process.
So we're instituting a limit to the amount of work that can be in-process at any given time in a sprint If I am on a team that accepts five items into
their sprint, I want a WIP limit that's something along the lines of one to two.
Not five.
And a lot of teams will take that five approach.
Each developer will grab their own story and go off, put their headphones on, and do their work.
But if I have a WIP limit of two, and I've got five developers, only two stories can be in process at any one given time.
So as a developer then, I am forced to approach that with a sense of, how can I help?
And that's what we want to instill in our team.
This is about teamwork.
Rather than starting something new, Let's stop that, let's finish what we've already started as a team.
So maybe that will help your team, stop starting, start finishing.