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I work as a developer in a scrum environment. For 2 sprints, my work has been rolled over due to a co-worker (the codebase's owner) not testing it quickly enough. The first sprint, I finished 3 days ahead of time and didn't get any feedback until the last day of the sprint, so it was rolled over to the next sprint. I fixed the issues 2 days into the next sprint and that code didn't begin being tested until 2 days before the next sprint. I was told he's testing it, but so far haven't received any feedback, so now my code is being rolled over to a new sprint again.

I feel like this reflects poorly on me to upper management. I want to "bug" this co-worker about testing my code, but I feel like doing that too much is rude. What are my options in this situation?

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    What has your manager said about the situation?
    – sf02
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 15:44
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    SCRUM- "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Ingio Montoya
    – paulj
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 15:54
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    I think the only thing that might reflect on your performance here is that you had to spend 2 days fixing issues that you didn't get correct the first time you tried. Concentrate on the quality of your own work and let your manager worry about when things hit "done".
    – musefan
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 16:26
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    Also, you know, perform you own tests as much as you can. I hope you were productive in some way in those days of "downtime"?
    – Gregory Currie
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 17:01
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    There's only team effort in scrum. Either the team delivers or it does not. There's not supposed to be an individual visibility. Do you talk about the blocker in the daily stand-up? Was there a review meeting between the sprints? Are you working on other tickets or just waiting?
    – Bernhard Döbler
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 19:10

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Scrum provides two ways for you to address this in the frame work.

The Standup: After you send your code to X for testing, in your standup report you include "I'm waiting for X to test my Y code so I can fix any bugs in it." Include this every day in your standup report until the testing is done. When you get close to the end of the sprint say "I'm waiting for X to test my Y code, and unless it happens very soon I probably won't be able to fix any bugs by the end of the sprint." Also investigate whether there is someone else who could test your code instead.

Also make sure that the story is assigned to X in your work tracking software.

The Retrospective: Say "Y story wasn't finished because X couldn't test it in time. I understand he's busy. Is there something we could do about this? Would it be OK to let someone else test code like this in the future? "

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    It's also a good chance to ask questions like: "is testing a bottleneck across the team?" "Should more people from the team be helping with testing, so we can ship?" "If this is not the highest priority, is there something else I should be helping with?"
    – Adam Burke
    Commented Apr 21, 2022 at 0:37

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