As a team lead, I have trouble coming up with a unifying theme for a sprint (2 weeks). My team is about 4 devs, 2 qa, a product owner, and myself (tech lead).
If we devote a sprint to finishing a cohesive goal, I find it extremely likely that some team members will be twiddling their thumbs for extensive periods of time. Or that team members will need to re-work stuff to fit with a key piece, which I consider even worse than thumb twiddling.
Do other teams experience this? How do you deal with it?
I try to have 1-2 big goals (stories) for the team in a sprint, and a few smaller, unrestricted ones as well. If we get blocked on the bigger stuff, the smaller stuff is ready to get knocked out.
If you're accomplishing cohesive, important goals with your sprint, why do you care about thumb twiddling or some refactoring?
If those doing the thumb twiddling are important team members who are tangential to this sprint, why not offer them a bonus vacation or something else morale boosting that doesn't require their butt to be in a seat when it's not necessary?
If they're not really helping you accomplish any important goals, why are they on your team?
All that said, it sounds like you've already struck a pretty good balance between accomplishing big goals and taking care of small but necessary stuff.
If we devote a sprint to finishing a cohesive goal, I find it extremely likely that some team members will be twiddling their thumbs for extensive periods of time. Or that team members will need to re-work stuff to fit with a key piece, which I consider even worse than thumb twiddling.
Do other teams experience this? How do you deal with it?
I try to have 1-2 big goals (stories) for the team in a sprint, and a few smaller, unrestricted ones as well. If we get blocked on the bigger stuff, the smaller stuff is ready to get knocked out.