How can we reduce downtime at the end of an iteration?

Posted by Anna Lear on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Anna Lear
Published on 2011-04-09T15:44:41Z Indexed on 2012/03/21 23:39 UTC
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agile

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development-process

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scrum

Where I work we practice scrum-driven agile with 3-week iterations. Yes, it'd be nice if the iterations were shorter, but changing that isn't an option at the moment.

At the end of the iteration, I usually find that the last day goes very slowly. The actual work has already been completed and accepted. There are a couple meetings (the retrospective and the next iteration planning), but other than that not much is going on.

What sort of techniques can we as a team use to maintain momentum through the last day? Should we address defects? Get an early start on the next iteration's work anyway? Something else?

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