As we near the end of a sprint, you will likely run out of tasks on the board. Here are some activities that you can do during those time periods:
- Help other team members get their work across the finish line
- Grab an unassigned task on the board
- Help review any open PRs
- Check for outstanding Confluence tasks
- Address any defects the QA team has found and reported on the board
- Help with backlog refinement & sprint planning
- Review stories, add your comments, help break them down, create missing tasks, etc.
- Look at the next sprint and see which tasks you have or could take (don’t forget to factor in any carry-over)
- Help the QA team conduct smoke testing
- Create or update our documentation
- Ensure release notes are up-to-date
- Identify tech debt that we haven’t accounted for
- Code clean up
- Review our story point estimates to see how accurate they were
- How can we improve them moving forward?
- Prep for ceremonies
- What are you going to demo?
- What retro items do you want to cover?
- Propose new process improvements
- Learn or research new things
- Patterns & Trends
- Check the current sprint dashboard for insights
- Check the historical data dashboard for insights
- Check the sprint stats reports for insights
- Conduct a “red team” exercise (challenge the status quo, stress test the system, attempt an intrusion)