7 tips for more effective morning SCRUM

Good practices to make morning SCRUM meetings more effective, more enjoyable and shorter in time

7 TIPS FOR MORE EFFECTIVE MORNING SCRUM

Andrea Tino

#scrum #best-practice #improvement#agile #how-to #7

after:of morning SCRUM meetings, this is what I learned...

YEAR MEETINGS MINUTES1 300+ 4500~

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?Morning SCRUM meeting is a crucial part in SCRUM when

adopting Agile methodologies, however sometimes these meetings tend to go in the wrong direction.

What should I say?

What should I focus about when reporting?

What should I NOT say?

What should I try to avoid?

How should I say it?

Should I enter in details? How much?

SCRUM meetings can take long as people have things to report. This is inevitable as the purpose of morning SCRUM is making the whole team aware about who is doing what!

Many people, stuff to report

DO NOT START ALWAYS FROM THE SAME PERSON!

It can be an habit to always take same positions and having one member start reporting.

CW or CCW? Up 2 U!

Do not jump, follow the order.

1

#1

#3

#5#2 #4

When starting, avoid standing always in the same spot. Changing perspective changes the way you speak sometimes!

Change your disposition

Being told to start is not bad, but always having a member volunteering to start is better. Next time another member will volunteer for obligation towards those who preceded him.

Volunteer to start

ALWAYS FOLLOW THE SAME REPORTING PATTERN

There is a good way to report stuff, and here is how you should do it.

2

Start first talking about what you did the last day.

You did...YesterdayI did

TodayI will do

Then move to what you plan to do in the current day.

You will do...25MAR

26MAR

IF YOU CAN’T BE THERE, SEND AN EMAIL WITH YOUR SCRUM STATUS

Morning SCRUM should always have all members present, also when they cannot be physically there.

3

Send it anyway

Some like sending the email in any case...

+My-TeamTo:

WFH & SCRUMSubject:

WFH, find my SCRUM status below :)

Did yesterday:- Fixed bug #2354- Closed collab. req.- Worked on #5422

Will do today:- Keep working on #5422- Pick another bug

Body:

Prior to SCRUM, send an email to all members with your SCRUM status in it.

SCRUM MailBla

Bla

BlaBla ...

MAKE IT SHORT, NO MORE THAN 5 MINUTES EACH

SCRUM should not take too long. It is good practice using no more than 5 minutes.

4

Be considerate of others

If you exceed in time, the next

member may feel under pressure and

use less time!

Report what you need but remember that your time is limited and you should not take more than 5 minutes.

Briefly...

Remember you need to make your colleagues aware of your progress, they do not want to hear the whole story. That’s why 5 minutes are enough!

You have time

REALLY NEED TO REPORT A PROBLEM?Sometimes team members tend to focus a lot on problems they had and how

they solved them. But, is it necessary to report this?

5...

Report!Let the Team know

where you’re headed.

Report!Describe it,

ask for help.

No action!Keep it for

yourself.

Your Team wants to know which direction your work is going to. Problems should be reported only if you need help from others.

Overall progress

Problems

Need help

<else>

REPORT A PROBLEM? KEEP IT SIMPLE!When it is necessary to report a problem to ask for suggestions try to describe it

without detailing things too much.

...5

Don’t go deep down, stay on the surface!

Yesterday the website went down because process X uses file Y and after parsing it does not release the XMLParser causing the object to retain memory. A code defect also causes the parser not to dispose of memory at destruction time.

I spent the whole day trying to fix the memory leak issue. We rely on a virtual method which gets called at construction time, but the virtual table is not ready at that time, so I moved that dependency using injection thorugh a function pointer.

What happened What you tried

Yesterday the website went down because process X does not properly release memory.

We rely on polymorphism at construction time, I fixed that issue and deployed the process again.

Those are your colleagues, no need to explain technical stuff, they already know!Do not explain what’s obvious!

Please don’t bubble about how much time you struggled on fixing something, everybody does every day :)

HOW TO “TAKE IT OFFLINE”When you see things are getting longer,

just take it offline!

6

When you start a 1-1 conversation, it is always a clear signal to take that offline!

No long conversations

We should not fix that bug!

High regression risk but we need a fix!

Let’s deliver it as a patch after release.

But we changed our release cycle,

gonna be too late!

!!!

TIO! When you are not addressing the whole team.

TIO! When you start detailing stuff too much.

TIO! When your colleagues are not following you anymore.

AVOID CHAOS, ONE AT A TIMEEspecially in the beginning, people might

start different conversations. Avoid it!

7Do not start talking with somebody leaving the rest out of the conversation. At SCRUM you need to share with the whole Team!

Avoid micro-talking

Bla

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ENJOY SCRUM!SCRUM happens in the morning, have a nice

SCRUM time to start a better day with your Team.

:)

Bla

Bla

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The EndTHANK YOUTwitter: @_atinoE-Mail: [email protected]

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