A Starting Point for Negotiations -- Delivering with a Heterogeneous Team

This paper presents a counterintuitive Pre-Sprint Work Balancing methodology that has substantially increased the ability of our highly heterogeneous Scrum [1] team to deliver what it promises at the end of each sprint. The process essentially consists of preplanning steps that acknowledge both the heterogeneity in developer´s time and skill level, as well as Product Owner priorities. These preplanning activities act as a starting point for negotiations with the team during the Sprint Planning Meeting. For our team, delivery of all promised tasks in a sprint has increased from less than 1/3 of our sprints to more than 2/3, with indications that we are heading towards nearly 100% delivery.