Spike a Way for Improving Agile Product Delivery

 

Agile has always valued customer feedback. Agile uses various methods to include customer feedback and to aid it in the process of software development. Much of the work agile teams include feedback from users like fixing and tracking the bugs and improving user experience. User story prompted from the user feedback is a small unit of work in an agile workflow but also an important one.

In cases where a solution to the user story is not immediately cleared, the team requires more research time and breaks the story into smaller divisions. This time is allocated by the product owner in advance of the sprint. The time spent in preparation for this story is called a spike story.

In short, we can say that a spike is a story where team members can not estimate the required time required by the story so instead of jumping to the solution or speculating about outcomes team members perform small experiments before moving towards implementation. Spikes can be used in various situations such as;

·       Conduct Research to familiarize team members with new technology and domains

·       Reduce risk, and uncertainty and gain confidence in a technical and functional approach

·       To determine the viability of epics perform feasibility analysis and other activities

·       Provide insight on the approach of splitting features and capabilities into small and quantifiable parts

·       Estimate new features and capabilities to analyze implicit behavior

·       The situation where development teams are confused if the required result will be obtained or not with the considered solution

·       A team requires initial work to estimate the user story

·       When multiple options are available and the team needs to find the most suitable one for the project

Types of Spike

There are two types of a spike in agile

Technical Spike- Used in research of various approaches of the solution domain. Examples are like defining build versus buy decision, load effect of a user story or evaluating potential performance, assessing specific technical application approaches, and developing confidence in the developed desired path.

Functional Spike- Used to analyze overall solution behavior and helps in determining how to break it, organize work, indicate risk and complexity existed, and use the insight to influence implementation decisions.

Teams sometimes require technical spikes or functional spikes. Even in some cases both the technical and functional spikes are used together.

Benefits of Spikes

·       Breaks uncertainty

·       The pressure of going undefined makes team define their actions

·       Clarity of the path where you are heading

·       Avoid overestimation caused due to uncertainty

·       Due to splitting the risk of certainty estimation is close to reality

Many have questions about whether multiple spikes can be used for a single story then the answer to this is- Yes, multiple spikes can be used for one story. For example, a team can use an agile spike for research of possible solutions, one spike for trial and error of solution, and one for estimating the implementation. All these spikes can be used for one story in three different sprints.

As spikes don’t directly deliver value using them sparingly with the help of the below guidelines

Guidelines for Spikes

Demonstration, Acceptance, and Quantifiable

Spikes are put into team backlog, estimation, and sized to fit in iteration similar to other stories but they provide information rather than working code-like stories. Spikes are for driving the necessary data to identify the solution confidently. The output obtained from spike can be demonstrated by providing ownership and responsibility for decision-making. The product owner accepts the spikes that are domed and meet acceptance criteria.

Spike Timing

As the uncertainty in spike is in more than one story it is advisable to avoid planning for both spike and resulting stories in the same iteration as it will be riskier. If only it’s small, straightforward, and quick for solution finding then only go for the same iteration.

Exceptions

Agile development consists of uncertainty and risk for almost every story. Experimenting, discussing, collaborating, and negotiating lead to the discovery of the right solution. Thus this shows us that every user story in agile almost consists of spike-like activity for technical and functional risks. Spike in agile is more critical only when uncertainty and many unknowns exist.

An agile spike gives trust, visibility, and predictability to the product roadmap and helps improve the agile product delivery by accurate information that leads to the right estimation.

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