Agile Best Practice - Where to Assign

[atarab]

Hi all,

I've been having trouble finding the Agile best practice regarding how to assign tasks to my software team. 

I know Jira's best practice is to create deliverable User Stories, that add value to the end-user. This means each User Story must include sub-tasks such as design, implementation, testing etc. So that the end result can be deliverable. 

Each of those subtasks needs to be performed by a different team - QA team/ mobile development team/ design team etc etc. 

Taking all the above into consideration, we are left to assume that we should be assigning tasks to users on a SUB TASK level, not a User Story level.

HOWEVER

This poses a big issue since in Jira the capacity planning for a sprint is done based on USER STORY.

If we estimate duration on a USER STORY level but assign to a team member on a SUB TASK level - how can we know how much estimation is on a team member for a specific sprint? How will we ever know if we are planning our sprint correctly? 

I hope this was clear, happy to clarify if not. 

Your thoughts and advice would be very much appreciated. 

[Robert Wen_Cprime_]

If the sub-tasks are performed by different teams, as opposed to teams that are cross-functional and self-organized, you will still have problems delivering value.

Working in an Agile mindset assumes that the team will work together to deliver the value captured in user stories.  Having different teams introduces handoffs that may impede the delivery flow.

[atarab]

Hi @Robert Wen_Cprime_ ,

Thanks for your answer. 

You are right, of course, that when working with Agile teams are cross-functional. 

We are a small company, so we only have one Software team. Our QA "team" consists of one person, the Mobile development "team" consists of two, etc. 

My question still stands. We are still left with the need to assign the subtasks of a story to different people. I am still not sure, if that is the case, how we can manage capacity on a User Story level when we have no idea if we are over assigning or under assigning sub-tasks to a specific user. 

Thank you

[Robert Wen_Cprime_]

How are you estimating effort on your user stories?  T-shirt size? Story points? Ideal days/hours?

[atarab]

Ideal days

[Aps]

Following

[Robert Wen_Cprime_]

If you're assigning ideal days, do your sub-tasks sum up to the ideals days size of the user story?

Are you incorporating history (a.k.a. "we've done this before and it took x days")?

Even then, are you incorporating some kind of margin?

Just some additional thoughts/questions