3 Amigos Meeting

Definition of 3 Amigos Meeting

The 3 Amigos Meeting is a collaborative meeting with a product owner, developer, and tester to align on user story understanding.

Pronunciation Spelling

THREE uh-MEE-gohs MEE-ting

Example Sentence

In a 3 Amigos meeting, we achieved a shared understanding leveraging all three perspectives.

Significance

Understanding the significance of the 3 Amigos Meeting is pivotal for teams engaged in backlog refinement—an essential aspect of agile workflows. This collaborative approach, involving a Product Owner, Developer, and Tester, plays a key role in enhancing the flow of work. By preemptively addressing ambiguity before Sprint Planning, teams pave the way for smoother execution.

However, it’s crucial to wield this practice judiciously. While the 3 Amigos Meeting is a powerful tool for refining the backlog, over-reliance can evolve into an anti-pattern. Exclusivity in refinement may jeopardize openness and transparency, hampering the collective intelligence of the team.

Attempting to expedite backlog refinement at the expense of broader team involvement can trigger a detrimental cycle. Cutting corners might seem like a time-saving strategy, but it risks a self-fulfilling prophecy. Limited participation in estimating and planning can lead to inadequate preparations, resulting in overcommitment and the perceived need for further shortcuts.

To maximize efficiency, it’s imperative to strike a balance. Leveraging the 3 Amigos Meeting for preliminary estimation is valuable, but redundancy should be avoided. If the entire team re-estimates later in the process, it could introduce inefficiencies. The key lies in optimizing the use of this collaborative practice, ensuring that it enhances, rather than hinders, the agile planning and execution cycle.

Additional Resources

• Anti-pattern: Assigning Story Points During Backlog Grooming
• 12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory — 3 Years Later
• Does your Scrum Team hold too many meetings?