No one likes to meet, but some meetings are necessary. And when a meeting is necessary, it’s worth knowing as much as possible about how to get the most out of that meeting, whether it’s sprint planning, daily scrum, review, retrospective, product backlog grooming, release planning or any other agile or Scrum meeting.
The following was originally published in Mike Cohn's monthly newsletter. If you like what you're reading, sign up to have this content delivered to your inbox weeks before it's posted here.
Standard Scrum advice is that the daily scrum is strictly time boxed to fifteen minutes. Don’t dare let it go any longer than that. I want to share an example of how I sometimes have…
The following was originally published in Mike Cohn's monthly newsletter. If you like what you're reading, sign up to have this content delivered to your inbox weeks before it's posted here.
On a consulting engagement a few years ago, the VP who had brought me had me start the day observing a few daily scrums. In each meeting I noticed the different ScrumMasters appeared…
The problem of some individuals rambling on and on and on and on ... during the daily scrum has been with us probably since the first sprint. I recently came across a brilliant technique to help encourage people to keep it short.
Whoever is giving their update during the daily scrum needs to hold a 3 kilogram (6-1/2 pound) medicine ball at arm's length. This is light enough that you can hold the medicine ball while giving your updated, but it's heavy enough that you don't want to give a long update.
Many teams struggle with keeping the daily scrum short. Some teams even exceed the standard fifteen-minute time box on a routine basis. I was teaching a Certified Scrum Master course a couple of weeks ago and someone there mentioned a great idea that I want to share.
When someone in the daily scrum starts to say something that would go deeper or beyond the traditional scope...
I never refer to the daily scrum (or daily standup) meeting as a "status meeting." The term "status meeting" is too pejorative for most of us. For me it conjures images of sitting around a table with each person giving an update to a project manager while everyone else feigns interest while either mentally preparing for their own upcoming update or wondering how much longer…
I've been wondering lately if Scrum is on the verge of getting a new standard meeting--the Backlog Grooming Meeting, which is a meeting an increasing number of teams are doing each sprint to make sure the product backlog is prepared and ready for the start of the next sprint.
To see why a Backlog Grooming Meeting may be a few years away from becoming a Generally Accepted Scrum Practice, or what I call a GASP, let's revisit the early 2000s.
Following the article in the Wall Street Journal on daily standup meetings a few weeks ago, a number of other places have interviewed me about the topic of daily standups. I don’t know why they’re asking me, but the interviews have been fun so far. The latest was on the National Public Radio (NPR) Marketplace show on Monday, 20 February 2012. You can listen to the whole show…
I want to address a question that I got recently and that comes up every month or two. I was recently emailed the following:
Most of our teams complete 10 or more user stories per sprint. When answering the 3 questions in the daily Scrum, it was clear what each person was working on, but it wasn't as clear how each story was doing or when a story was in trouble. For…
The scrum of scrums meeting is an important technique in scaling Scrum to large project teams. These meetings allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration. Imagine a perfectly balanced project comprising seven teams each with seven team members.
Many teams try to divide and conquer when it comes to sprint planning, often with disjointed and disappointing results. This article explores why planning, like so many other agile practices, should truly be a team sport.
