There are 3 days left in your Sprint and your devs are done. Now what?

Do you take on new user stories?

I know , it’s very tempting, and we’ve done it too.  Devs are happily coding while QAs are trying to finish their tests. Sadly, sometimes QAs didn’t have time to finish their test and the team hasn’t been able to complete their user stories. But hey, at least the devs had something to code, right? In this situation is a missed out opportunity for the team to work as a “team” with the same goal: deliver a Product Increment. 

I’m not saying it’s wrong to start the development of user stories in the next sprint. However, I would strongly recommend first looking at how can devs help the other team members complete the user stories. 

So what else can the devs do?

• Is there another user story where the development isn’t finished? Can you break it into smaller tasks and split it with other devs? How about writing their unit tests? How about pair programming?
• Can you execute some QA tests? If the steps are written, you should be able to follow the steps and do them. I recommend testing another user story, not the one the Dev have written.
• Are there  any integration or end2end automation tests that can be written? Can you help with the setup of the QA automation infrastructure?

What do your devs do before the end of the Sprint?

Developer