Tracking Data Scientists in Jira?

[vildana_ermaya]

My team currently tracks two data scientists in Jira along with the devs but most of their work is research-based and can't be done within our 1 week sprint window. So most of their stories just keep rolling over from sprint to sprint and since their stories are research-based, they have high story point values. This impacts the team's overall completion rates and such. 

I would like to know if there are similar teams who have experienced something similar and if there are better, more efficient ways to account for the work data scientists do that's still in an agile format. Since we are a small team, we still want to have them involved and have visibility into their work. I'm not sure if this means we have a separate board in Jira just for them or just not adding story point values to their stories, but their work would still roll over into the next sprint...

[Konstantin Nazarov]

Scrum is not a universal project management tool. Scrum is not designed to handle projects with a high degree of uncertainty. What you are doing is violating the Scrum Guid.

Scrum is applicable for projects in which the Scram framework is able to overcome uncertainty and get a product incrementally.

The point of using Scrum in projects with uncertainty is that every small increment of product - 1 sprint ahead can be precisely defined. If this approach does not overcome the uncertainty, then a different method of project management is required.

For experience, you can turn to PMBOK.

If Srum is applicable for part of your work, but for part it is not applicable, then either you completely abandon Scrum and create your own project management method, or divide the project into 2 projects. One of them is a Scrum project, the other is a research project.

According to “End Note” of “Scrum Guid”:

“Scrum is free and offered in this Guide. Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices”

So, your project may not even be called a Scrum project.

The advice is simple. Separate yours 1 project in 2. There is no need to force researchers into the conveyor of the Scrum plant. Scrum is a factory for regularly producing increments of product for Product owner... something like this. Have a nice day, Vildana Ermaya