The Scrum Concept
If you work in the software industry, undoubtedly you’ve seen or read a pitch on the Agile software development process and how it will solve all of your problems. There is merit to the process, but I must admit that when I read posts about Waterfall versus Agile, my mouse and attention start wandering elsewhere. However, one aspect of Agile development from which everyone can benefit is the daily scrum.
The word itself has roots in rugby. If you’re familiar with the sport, you’ve probably noticed that the ball often disappears under a pile-up of players that join shoulder to shoulder and push against the other team. The ball magically rematerializes a few seconds later and finds its way into another player’s hands. That’s a scrum: a quick get together that keeps the ball moving.
Software development teams use the term to describe quick meetings that track progress on a “sprint,” one of many short periods leading to a product release. Unlike in rugby, these scrums are a pain-free approach to a “daily checkin” with your team that, when done correctly, can bring clarity and accountability to your project in just a few minutes every day. At HiDef we get together every day, each team member answering three questions:
- What did you accomplish yesterday?
- What are you plans for today?
- What are your roadblocks? (ie, those things keeping you from progressing)
The best part about this simple format is that any group, from sales teams to nonprofits, can benefit.
The Big 3: Consistent, Quick, Clear-Cut
Contrary to what you may think, pulling a scrum off successfully can be quite difficult. Often what you’ll find when you first introduce it to your team is that old habits die hard: chattiness, rabbit trails, and other distractions can easily defeat the purpose and turn a scrum into “just another meeting.” There are three keys to victory, however:
Be Consistent
One key to our scrum’s effectiveness is that it is the exact same time every day, 8:15 AM. 8:15 is definitely our sweet spot, allowing those who like to come in early knock out a few tasks before scrum, while those who come in at 8:00 have 15 minutes to organize their days.
Make it Quick
The idea’s simple here: scrum should last no more than 15 minutes.
We generally have eight participants in our scrum. 15 minutes is just enough time to cover the bases, but not enough to take a big dent out of anyone’s focus. Each team member comes with his or her list, being sure to call out any roadblocks he or she is experiencing.
Keep it Clear-cut
There are a variety of roles you can dole out to different team members for a scrum. We choose to keep ours mostly flat, but one role we don’t neglect is “scrum master.” This experienced and diplomatic meeting facilitator will keep the scrum clear-cut by identifying and deferring “complex” items to scrum-of-scrum sessions that are best held right after the scrum and include only affected team members. Without a scrum master, team members will be tempted to start working out problems right away rather than simply state them.
Imagine this scenario: Joe reports a bug in the latest release and can’t progress in his programming. Jane, the sys admin, immediately starts talking about a cron job that could fix the problem, then Bobby pipes in about dependencies of the website that can’t be neglected when creating cron jobs… A Scrum Master will sniff this rabbit trail out before it even starts and schedule a scrum-of-scrums for Joe, Jane, and Bobby. The three amigos have their confab right after the main scrum, and everyone’s happy (especially the designers).
Scrum with a Virtual Team
Ideally scrums are held standing up with coffee and donut (or bagel) in hand. Increasingly, however, Agile teams are using this format in distributed environments. Here are some tools that can get your virtual team scrumming with the best of ‘em:
- Skype - Having a service which combines voice over IP and text chat is a great way to encourage people to post notes and keep a running log of your scrum history. At 8:15 I call all participants in the “HiDef Daily Scrum” conversation, and we all paste in our notes as we answer the three questions.
- Conference Calling - For teams that are not as virtual, many free conference call services exist allowing teammates to dial in from wherever they are.
- Google Apps - You can’t talk collaboration without Google Apps. From Google Docs, to Google Wave, there are countless ways you might leverage products in the cloud to run your scrum.
- Call Recording - Recording calls can be quite useful, but remember to announce your plans. Unless you are the Department of Homeland Security, it’s illegal to record people in certain states without their knowledge, and doing this across state lines could actually get you into trouble. Call recording is especially valuable if you have two teams halfway across the world that can’t meet all in one meeting.
Making It Fun
Fridays in my last office were usually bagel day (I lived in Boulder; we were too fit for donuts). With HiDef I’ve missed the casual conversations we had while schmearing cream cheese. So how do you recreate a casual environment pre-Scrum for telecommuters? At HiDef we always say hello in our “Group Chat” window, share tunes on lala, link to YouTube videos, or discuss NPR articles as everyone comes online for the day. We also make Friday especially informal, giving ourselves a minute to break the round robin format we employ for scrum and discuss less pressing matters (Tom made sure we paid special attention to curling during the Olympics).
And, of course, in line with long-standing office tradition, don’t forget the occasional practical joke. A few laughs go a long way, especially for virtual teams that tend to gravitate to only business-related discussions given the lack of water coolers and bagels.
No Roadblocks.
