Tips on Knowing if Your Daily Scrum Sucks

October 18, 2010 3 Comments

Below are some tell-tale signs that your daily Scrum sucks.

  1. The team members stand at attention and salute the Scrum Master.
  2. There is an infestation of clucking chickens.
  3. You have a hard time hearing everyone over the loud yawning.
  4. There’s lots of very descriptive, helpful answers to “what did you do since the last meeting?” like “stuff”, “things”, or even better…”nothing”.
  5. The team members who did nothing since the last meeting happen to be the “rock stars” pre-Scrum…oh, and they never, never, ever, ever have anything standing in their way.
  6. Every meeting reminds you of the movie “Groundhog Day”.
  7. The first 5 minutes is spent waiting for the projector to warm up.
  8. You get to meet a new member of the team almost everyday, while never having a chance to say goodbye to the dearly departed.
  9. Most’s answers to “what are you going to do today”,  are “get sign-off”.
  10. Big Brother is there to make sure the team is “on track”.
  11. Most meetings consist of discussing episodes of “Fringe”.
  12. The meetings are typically very lonely, as you are the only one that shows up.
  13. Bullies are allowed to…well…bully.
  14. Everyone has their laptops open IMing each other about “how stupid this meeting is”, while the Scrum Master or Product Owner is assigning tasks.
  15. You get to hear intriguing, long presentations about each and every detail on things like how to install and set up subversion, or maybe even if you’re lucky you may hear why Lisp is the best programming language in the world!

While many of these are a bit tongue-in-cheek, they actually represent the many dysfunctional daily Scrums I’ve attended.  And yes, I’ve been guilty of participating in the dysfunction.

So, let’s hear from you guys!  What kind of signs have YOU seen that your daily Scrum sucks?

Advertisement

Filed under Agile, Meetings, Process, Scrum

Effective Meetings Mean More Than Discussing

July 12, 2010 Leave a comment

Many companies have been trying to reduce the overhead of meetings, to no avail. I have a really simple idea. Never set up or attend a meeting where the goal is to “DISCUSS” things. Here’s some examples of meeting invites I’ve had over the years:

  • Discuss technology direction
  • Discuss production outage
  • Discuss ORM
  • Discuss contract

Of course these meetings never have agendas. And what work is actually accomplished? None! A friend of mine compared these kinds of meetings to bar conversations. You know those; lots of fun dreaming about “what ifs” and coming up with a plan on how to “make it big”. And what happens after those conversations? Nothing. It’s as if they never happened.

Let’s rewrite those meeting invites to be a bit more productive.

  • Decide whether to build the application using .NET or Java
  • Create an action plan that minimizes production outages and define a clear escalation path in the case that they do occur
  • Decide whether to use Hibernate or EJB
  • Decide whether to accept or reject the proposed contract

Notice that the verbs imply finality, “discuss” does not. “Decide”, “create”, “define” means that you will leave the meeting having made progress. You now have a definition of “Done” for the meeting. You will never know when you are “Done” discussing.

Filed under Meetings, Process