As I mentioned as part of the lead-in article SCRUM-tastic Tuesday, Scrum tries to address a number of time-management dynamics that can lead teams to lose focus. This is generally referred to as time-boxing, and has only a few basic rules.
- All meetings have a fixed length
- Attendance is enforced
- Start exactly on time, whether or not everyone is present
- End exactly on time, whether or not everyone is done talking
- Stick to the Agenda
- No Agenda means no meeting
These concepts are pretty simple and are geared towards ensuring everyone gets the most out of each meeting and that meetings do not get side-tracked or devolve into complaint sessions (except for the Retrospective meeting). While Scrum prescribes a number of meetings throughout the Sprint life-cycle, the most well know is probably the Daily Scrum meeting. When we apply the rules it may look something like this...
- The meeting will last precisely 15 minutes
- The meeting will start precisely at 10:00 am
- Each pig will address the following three questions in 60 seconds or less
- What did you do yesterday?
- What will you do today?
- What impediments do you have?
- Any remaining time will be open for questions from the chickens or general team discussions
Believe it or not this meeting is very effective and is geared towards keeping the larger team informed of where everyone is and who may need help. Given the short amount of time in this meeting, momentum and adherence to the rules is very important. Here is a quick tip to keep this moving and make sure everyone learns to keep to the important details.
Go out and buy yourself a digital timer. For each pig, set the timer to 60 seconds or so and let the pig answer the daily questions. When the time expires, interrupt the speaker, reset the timer, and move on to the next pig. Continue this until you reach the end, or until the meeting time has expired. This may seem a bit harsh and at times it may even seem rude, but once you go through this a few times people will tend to stick to what is important. Before you know it, your Daily Scrum meeting will be running like a well oiled machine.
As it turns out, I do have a preference on timer selection. Again, it may seem silly, but I recommend you choose a timer that can easily be heard by everyone even when you are setting the time. I can't really explain it, but there seems to be something about hearing the time being set, starting, and ending that reassures people they are getting a fair slice of time. Here is one that we use...
If you feel you need something a bit nerdier, you could also get one of a number of free IPhone apps that do the same thing.
Tags: processes