How to manage prod deployments after sprint completion

Question

Hello everyone,

Currently our DoD is effective when the Product owner has validated the story with a test in a pre-production environment. Its test is carried out after that of the QA team. Knowing that when a sprint is closed, all the stories at DONE are no longer accessible, how to manage the stories that must be deployed in production? Unfortunately, we currently have capacity issues, the consequence is that many stories are not validated during a sprint. We must therefore be able to easily set aside validated stories from those that are not to carry out the deployment in production.

Thanks

TC Wang_f5xqx2 · Answer

Hi @sacha_rouzkhosh

Yes! I'm using story points.

Perhaps you can try the Jira workflow? You can create/edit (customized) statuses in the workflow.

When can the points be burned? -> I think this can be discussed and agreed in your team. I know in some dev teams, points are burned when QA is verified. In my team, points are burned when stories are deployed, so different teams may have different DoDs (and when points can be burned).

ps. In Jira, the points are burned down when stories are moved to the rightmost status (in Kanban).

Let me know if any other questions :)

sacha_rouzkhosh · Answer

Hi @TC Wang

Thanks for your suggestions.

Can I ask you as well if you're currently using story points to estimate stories?

I'm currently trying to configure Jira to be in line with our DoD but it's not always obvious: which workflow, when to burn the points, from which status to consider that the story is at DONE, etc.

Assuming PO acceptance is included in the DoD, when can the points be burned? Knowing that the Dev team commits to tickets according to its velocity and that this velocity is calculated according to the points burned during the previous sprints, at what point in the workflow should the points be burned in your opinion?

Thanks

TC Wang_f5xqx2 · Answer

Hi @sacha_rouzkhosh

I've experienced a similar situation, so I can share what I did before (note that this needs to be clearly communicated and agreed upon by your team):

1. Maybe you can change the DoD. I once added a Verified status between QA (or in your case, Product Owner validated) and Done. Any story that has passed QA but has not yet been deployed is Verified.

2. Or you can leave the DoD unchanged. Create a new sprint (called "To be deployed") and add validated stories to it. This way you can safely close the current sprint and have all your to-be-deployed stories managed in a dedicated sprint (you don't need to start/close this sprint; you can just move stories out of it after deployment and this sprint can be reused).

Hope the above helps!