Stage 3 of 8 · 8 lessons · ~2 weeks

Working with your team

Learn the rhythm of a software team: standups, tickets, estimates, sprint meetings and written updates, and how to work with product and design, in plain English whether or not it is your first language.

Start: Standups that help the team

Lessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order

Do this

Write down your team's rituals, how often they happen and what each one is for.
Give your standup update as progress, next step and blockers, in under 30 seconds.
Before starting a ticket, restate it in one sentence and ask about any unclear acceptance criteria.
Give one estimate as a range with the biggest unknown named.
Bring one concrete, process-focused point to your next retrospective.
Rewrite one of your recent messages so it makes sense to someone who was not there.
Ask a product manager or designer one specific question about an edge case before building.

Start with· follow one of these

GuideFree
Atlassian Agile Coach
Atlassian · Beginner
Short, practical pages on standups, estimation, sprints and retros, whatever tool your team uses
GuideFree
The Scrum Guide (2020)
Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland · Beginner
The original definition of sprint events in half an hour, so the vocabulary makes sense

Practise

Atlassian Team Playbook
Write your own user manual and read your team's working agreements with ready-made plays
BBC Learning English
Five to ten minutes a day of workplace English if it is your second language

Keep handy

GitLab Handbook: Communication
A real company's rules for async writing, meetings and chat, to compare with your team's
Google Technical Writing Courses
Free short courses on clear technical writing for tickets, messages and docs

Also worth your time

Shape UpGo deeper
A different way to plan work than sprints, useful for understanding why teams choose their process

Before moving on: A one-page note on how your team works: its rituals and cycle length, how tickets and estimates are handled, which channels to use for what, and one retrospective point you raised.

Tauseef's advice

The rituals feel strange at first, but each one exists to solve a problem. Ask your buddy why the team does it this way; the answer teaches you the team's history. And write short. A clear three-line message beats a long polished paragraph, in any language.