The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER NINE

Ownership

Top-notch execution lies in getting the details right, and no one understands the details better than the people who actually do the work. [Poppendieck2003]

Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit

Agile teams own their work. They decide for themselves what to work on, how to break it into tasks, and who on the team will do it. This is because of a fundamental Agile principle: the people who are doing the work are the ones who best understand what needs to be done. They’re the ones most qualified to decide the details.

Ownership isn’t just about control, though. It’s also about responsibility. When teams take ownership of their work, they also take responsibility for getting it done.

This chapter has the practices you need to take ownership of your work and successfully get it done:

• “Task Planning” helps your team break stories into tasks and decide how they’ll get done.

• “Capacity” ensures your team signs up only for what it can complete.

• “Slack” improves capacity and allows your team to make reliable short-term commitments.

• “Stand-Up Meetings” helps team members coordinate their work.

• “Informative Workspace” surrounds your team with useful information.

• “Customer Examples” helps your team collaborate with experts.

• “Done, Done” focuses your team on creating software that’s ready to release.

OWNERSHIP SOURCES

Self-organization and collective ownership have always been at the heart of Agile.

The ways in which teams plan their tasks has ...