Wednesday 17 August 2016

Scrum : Who is for what?

Scrum very clearly defines a simple rule for the attendees and the participants. No unwanted noise. When the scrum guide states "The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members participate in the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is not a status meeting, and is for the people transforming the Product Backlog items into an Increment." It really has a reason. Most scrums I just see it ends up becoming a Q&A session. Majority of times it is a status update meeting, for all those who want to know what is happening in the project, this sounds like the best time to know the details.

Scrum to be effective needs to be technical. Really.  Dev teams need to discuss line of code, architecture, blockers, dependencies. Things that managers don't understand. The scrum Master also need to be a bit careful on who to allow as a participant and who to allow as a attendee. For most times I have found myself getting into a scrum as an attendee only to be tempted to participate. This temptation, I surely see cannot be survived by many and they end up driving a scrum to an endless and slightly meaningless turn.

I always suggested our scrum teams to take some discussions offline, maybe as adhoc post scrum meetings, just so there is no time wasted for everyone in the room or even the development staff that has no need of listening to it. A scrum can really go long when there is no censor over the attendees and participants... I drew a small table suggesting how a scrum meeting longed with different attendees and participants...

 Attendee / Participant
 Impact
 Additional Time
 Product Owner
 Questions, Clarifications, How to do, what to do kind of discussions sneak in.
 10-25 mins
 Leads / Managers
 Questions like What are you working on, what is the status, when will it be delivered, etc. etc.
 12-25 mins
 Non Team members
 Updates from other products, questions or discussions that have no team connections
 5-10 mins

Your scrums are to progress the backlogs. Your scrums are to list and help remove impediments. Your scrums are to be on same page in regards to the tasks in hand. Your scrums are to make the hustle effective. Your scrum gives you ability to show what is stopping you and move further.

Scrums are not for Status updates, Scrums are not for non core members to get answers from core teams, Scrums are not for planning projects or discussing solutions.

If your scrum is short, it will be crisp.
If your scrum is objective, it will be fruitful
If your scrum is balanced, it will be result driven...


Start scrumming, not mobbing.



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