At what point intervention?

I find myself very nervous about this afternoon's 3:15 Studio meeting. I have a feeling that some key PBIs are going to be missing, but there's a sense in which that is fixed through Scrum by carrying them over with high priority to the next Sprint. My deeper concern is that the developers are losing steam, in large part because they have been myopically looking at the PBIs rather than keeping one eye on future needs. Alistair Cockburn put it best when he described software development as a cooperative game with two goals: first, meeting the needs of the current iteration; second, setting up for the next one. In looking over students' shoulders, eavesdropping in discussions, and directly working with them, I see the students expending all their effort on the first goal and almost none on the second goal.

There are various things I can do to help as a Product Owner who is also the lead software architect. I could invest time in developing a robust technical design document that describes the pieces of the architecture that are not yet in place. I could run through the product backlog and come up with reasonable estimations for every PBI so that I can make a product burndown chart to show studio velocity.

The key dilemma I keep coming back to, however, is this: at what point to I just sit down and write some code? The game is already based on an entity architecture kernel that I provided, and I am one of the principle stakeholders in the success of the project. I see some of the students seriously struggling with code that, to me, is at most a two-hour job. There is value in having students struggle through these problems so that they can develop problem-solving skills and learn to deal with frustration. On the other hand, one of the best ways to learn is by working with someone more talented. At what point is it better for me to just show them how to write it rather than trying to coax it out of them? For that matter, how do I know when it is better for the project for me to add modules or refactor modules students have already created? These questions make me nervous, and I think it's because there's no "undo" button for teaching.

In my mind, I keep coming back to the Confluence project, where I worked right alongside Carrie and Josh to build that system, and it was good: the system worked and they learned. For that project, I had release time to develop it, and both students received independent study credits, and I don't have any doubt that we did the right thing. 3:15 Studio is formed out of a "regular" class, with an order of magnitude more students. Does that mean it is any different?