Wrong assumptions - Take nothing for granted!

As a Product Owner, my primary responsibility is for the "What" of the team, not for the "How".

This week, we had a completely new product and so we formed a new team and did what we always did in projects ...

Communicate the product vision, set up the backlog, define Working Agreements - and get the action on!

We're doing 1-week sprints, because they work very well for our company and those weekly Retrospectives are really valuable.

Anyway. So, we had our Review and the team had done a good job, completed 14 Story Points and done a lot of work that will help them reach a higher velocity later on.

Or, so I thought.

After the Review was over, I casually asked "So, how many unit tests did you write this week?"

... deafening silence ...


Guess what?

The team hadn't had an explicit Working Agreement to write unit tests - and so they didn't!
It's a good thing we have weekly sprints: The Retro will take care of this.

Lesson Learned

Never, ever take anything for granted - you never know who interprets things how!
Better be explicit about the Engineering Practices that will be employed in the project than accumulating technical debt.