Since my team is separated by the Atlantic Ocean, we needed a software solution to still work together. I decided on the Agilo plugin for Trac. After all of the planning meetings, I had two days to get the software up & running and backlogs filled in before I left the country for a conference. I also had to give a research talk and finishing a poster - what could go wrong?
Agilo is really good software, but I was really bad at setting up the initial repository. Unfortunately the IT expert that did this for me before was on holiday. The project was not set up before I left. I came home late Sunday night and was on a train to Pisa all day Monday hoping I might be able to set up the project Monday night.
This was not to be. The internet was down Monday night when I finally arrived. No big deal, I still have the 6 hour time change working for me, I can just hit it in the morning... until the internet was out at my lab all day Tuesday. Awesome! I can't even set up the site, much less fill out the project or sprint backlogs, until Thursday afternoon (4 days into a 10 day sprint).
Luckily the recording hardware was fubar and I couldn't do any of my tasks. So my team decided to start the sprint a week late (today). It is cheating and will inflate our real velocity because we had an extra week (sort of) to do the work. But neither one of us wanted to waste time back-dating tasks or having another planning meeting before anything was actually accomplished.
the best thing to do when you hit a major impediment like you had with the recorder is to push that story off until a later sprint when the impediment can be moved and then pull in something that can be worked now.
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