3 Amigos

4 minutes read

The 3 Amigos is a kind of Agile workshop wherein a small group gets together to refine the user story. The key objective of this workshop is to make the story ready to get it on the iteration board.

The 3 Amigos approach is usually made up of a Product Owner (PO) or Business Analyst (BA), a Developer and a Tester/QA. The PO clarifies the requirements before development; the developer lays out the issues that may arise in development processes; and the QA ensures that testing considerations are designed into requirements and development.

Some argue that UX should be included as a 4th Amigo as well as they can be scenarios of further designs needed, or changes in current designs. But keep in mind you do not want the entire team in this workshop!

What is the objective of 3 Amigos workshop?

  1. Determining and refining requirements - The PO, Dev and QA collaboratively review and discuss the requirements/features and update them during the sessions until they all agree that the user story is ready for development.

  2. Clear acceptance criteria - A set of accepted conditions/business rules which the functionality or feature should satisfy and meet, in order to be accepted by the PO.

  3. Develop tests - The test scenarios are discussed and reviewed, until a consensus is reached whether the feature behaviour is covered in full.

What are the benefits of 3 Amigos workshop?

  • A common understanding of the product and deliverables.
  • Ensures better quality of work.
  • Ambiguities and gaps, if any, are identified early on.
  • Any blockers, misunderstandings, assumptions, and confusion will be eliminated before any work is started on those tasks.
  • The feedback loop between the team reduces drastically.
  • Edge cases related stories are identified early on.

When is the best time to do 3 Amigos workshop?

The best time to do the 3 Amigos workshop is shortly before work starts on a feature. Ideally no more than a week or two before work on the feature starts. If it's done too soon, the team will tend to forget the important details discussed. The meeting should preferably be time boxed, like the other scrum ceremonies, to around 30 - 45 minutes. If the meeting overruns the time-box, then the feature is most likely too big and can and should be broken down into smaller slices.

Conclusion

Don’t confuse 3 Amigos with backlog grooming. Both meetings are about defining what to develop and build, however, backlog grooming involves the whole team, happens on a regular schedule, and doesn’t generate any testing scenarios. Think of 3 Amigos as a collaboration conversation that needs to happen. It’s good to document the outcome, otherwise you lose the very purpose for attempting 3 Amigos. Keep it simple and crisp, and you will soon find a pattern that works for your team.