Biweekly Scrummy Scrum
At LINEAS we currently run our first three Scrum projects. I am one of the three Scrum Masters. Unfortunatly we don’t have much experience with Scrum. Actually we only knew it from books, and this weird thing called internet, before we started. So there are lots of questions we have and only few who we can ask. Thats why we invented the
Biweekly Scrummy Scrum
Its inspired by the daily Scrum of a normal Scrum project but happens as you might have guessed every other week. The purpose of this short meeting is to exchange problems and ideas for their resolution and so far it works really well. Although it is really not much time we invest we learn a lot.
It is open to everybody interested in Scrum and it is limited in it time frame. It starts right before the lunch break, so there is a strong incentive for not letting it run to long. So far we don’t use a fixed structure. It is more like an open discussion group. Maybe in the future when we all have somewhat settled for a basic implementation of Scrum we’ll use a more strict structure, where everybody reports about her problems, possible fixes are discussed and a plan is formed about what to do about the problem until the next meeting.
You might think it is a Scrum of Scrums as described in many book, but I don’t think so since the teams involved are completely independent and don’t work on the same or related projects. Also it isn’t only for scrum masters, but for everybody interested. If comparable at all it is more like an Improvement Community as described in Succeeding with Agile, which is a group interested in a certain kind of change, working together in order to support that change. But so far we don’t have an improvement backlog, but maybe that would be a great idea.
What do you to improve you agile/scrum/kanban or projectmanagement skills inside your company?
Jens,
That sounds like a good practice.
In fact I’ve heard and used the term Community of Practice for groups like this.
Adding an Enterprise Improvement Backlog sounds like a good idea too, but I would let that emerge naturally rather than proposing it in the first place.
Would be interested in how you proceed!
Cheers
Olaf
We actually agreed yesterday to have a dedicated backlog for our little community. Maybe I should snap a photo when it filled up a little
At the last company I worked for, we had a similar meeting for all three teams that had to work on the same product. After trying some different structures, we finally settled on a “market place” inspired by Open Space: once a week we would meet, and everyone could propose a topic by writing it on a big index card and putting it on the white board. Everyone else interested in that topic would sign the index card, and the topic proposer would then organize a meeting. At the next market place, the group would report back on what had been discussed and/or decided in the meeting. Worked really well, and as far as I know, that process still is in place.