Scrum Experiences & Suggestions

Agile is an approach which is extremely prevelent in the IT industry, to the point where unfortunately the word “agile” tends to be thrown around everywhere, often out of context. Agile is strictly speaking a mind-set, with four foundational values and twelve supporting principles from the Agile Manifesto. There are many specific methods which fall under the banner of Agile, but Scrum is probably the best known and the idea of a daily Scrum to manage work is common to almost all agile developments. My initial experience of Scrum started a number of years back, where I found myself as both Project Manager and sometimes Scrum Master for a major Agile Project. I had a bit of a theoretical agile background, but no practical experience, so I soon found myself in at the deep end.

It was a really useful experience, and I learned a lot about Agile and Scrum along the way; I thought I should share some of those Scrum experiences and Lessons Learned:

1. When: The Scrum should be at a set time every day without fail, early enough in the morning to set the tone for the day but late enough to ensure everyone is consistently in the office in time - I suggest around 9:30 - 10:00 is ideal. The key is to make sure everyone attends on time, and the meeting starts precisely when it is planned. If you feel brave, a top tip is to physically lock the door once the start time is reached and lock-out late attenders. They will be bemused and frustrated, but it will soon get the message across and they won’t be late again. I suggest the Scrum should be 15 minutes in duration, short and sharp - any longer and you are just waffling. Get a high quality and visible wall clock, set it right and make sure everyone knows that is the master time clock - then there are no excuses! The basic discipline of everyone being in the right place at the right time will help set the tone for the Project, and combat the view held by some that agile = sloppy.
2. Burndown: The Sprint Burndown is essentially your real-time status report on the Sprint, it tells you as Project Manager as well as senior managers who take an interest, how the Sprint is progressing. Have the Sprint Burndown on a screen for all to see when they assemble during the buffer time; this will help foster the mind-set that it is a team effort and the entire team is responsible for that progress, and it is literally a sprint to get the scope delivered in time
3. Stand Up: I'll be honest and say we used to sit down when I used to attend scrums, but I regret it. We always got nice and comfortable, then the meeting dragged on for half an hour. By physically standing up it encourages brevity from participants. I walked through an office recently and saw a bunch of people in what must have been a scrum. They were sitting…
4. Agenda - Each scrum team member provides an update on 3 things during the Scrum:
   1. What they did yesterday
   2. What they will be doing today
   3. What is blocking their progress. As PM you should be particularly interested in listening to these, catch the team members off-line after the Scrum to see if you can help remove those obstacles – your priority is to be a servant leader and to help make their job easier.
5. No Discussions – Be aware of the risk of discussions starting up from these three update points; have an egg timer on hand and as soon as someone asks a question then the scrum master should visibly tip it over in the middle of the table – when it runs out then discussion stops and it gets taken offline after the Sprint. This stops the meeting dragging on, losing focus and wasting a lot of attendees’ time.
6. No External Input - Only the project team can contribute, that is those completing Story Points and contributing towards Spring Velocity. As PM this may mean that you don't contribute and are not allowed to talk! It depends how you translate the traditional PM role into Agile, but definitely no senior managers or external stakeholder interrogating the team or asking questions - shut them up and kick them out! If that means you as PM needs to take heat to protect the team then so be it, as a servant leader you need to protect them from distractions.

What experiences do you have of Scrums, and how effective were they? Let us know!

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