Mdthbs

I am a developer. Sometimes we have stories which will require some sort of asset that is not in the control of the dev team. A common example would be that the story calls for a new piece of UI to be added, but another party/department will be providing the correct copy (text) for this.

I may be told the requirements for a new story are something like:

"We need to add something across the top here. It'll be no more than two lines of text and maybe 5 bullet points. It needs to look prominent and visually interesting."

At this point, I have no idea what the copy will actually be, but need to size the story anyway, based on what I think it roughly entails. When it comes to sprint planning, the story is pulled into the sprint and often I am told the copy will be ready by a certain day, which falls during the upcoming sprint itself. So the story is entered into the sprint with a size, but without the assets available.

I find these stories often take me longer than I estimated, or I put off starting them because the assets aren't ready yet and I don't know when they will be. Sometimes the sprint ends and the assets still weren't available for me to start.

If I need to do some design work it sometimes takes twice as long it should because I don't really know what content I'm designing for. Other issues that crop up are things like I start the story and finish the UI, but then the copy becomes available. So I need to revisit the story and enter the copy. Then I might need to work on it again to make it look right now that the final copy is in. All this time I can't really mark the story as Done and this kind of story sitting in "In Progress" for days half finished clutters my mind and affects my focus on another area of development.

I feel like no story should be entered into the sprint unless all the assets are finalised and available. Is this an unrealistic expectation? We are a small company and don't really have a dedicated Scrum Master - it's basically me, but as I am also a developer and don't necessarily have time to be chasing for assets during a sprint (and I find it distracting).

What should we be doing?

TLDR: Don't accept anything into the Sprint if the Scrum Team cannot complete it in its current form.

From the Scrum Guide:

Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. [...] Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.

The ideal Scrum solution is to take the work of creating these requisite assets and move it into the Scrum Team itself. Either by adding people to the Scrum Team or by adding skills to the existing members.

If that is not possible for whatever reason, then I would suggest you reject any work that the Scrum Team is unable to complete on its own. Until such time that the Scrum Team is able to complete it.

I would advise that any team is within their rights to not pull something into a sprint that isn't ready. If you decide you need all copy before it is ready, then that is your prerogative.

However, I would also coach any team to strive to be more responsive than that if they can without compromising their own team or the quality of the product. The situation you describe is not uncommon. The flaw in the thinking I usually see here is the assumption that one feature can be effectively developed by 2 different groups without working closely together. Designing a great UI is a collaborative effort of code, visual design, content, and experience. Ideally, all of these skills should be in the Scrum Team. However, if you were in the situation where you couldn't have this, it would definitely be important to build practices that allow those individuals to effectively collaborate in the sprint.