Projects, Projects…..

Sorry, but does anyone really force there teams to stand?  We get done in 10-15 minutes, so I don’t really feel the necessity to make everyone’s feet hurt. Is starting a blog post with a tangent a bad sign? Ok, so on to the point. The Daily standup.

Lately we’ve morphed from the traditional Scrum model into a sort of storytelling standup. Instead of asking the three questions to each individual, we do it for each story that we have taken into the sprint. This leads to an extreme focus on the stories themselves. It has better highlighted dependencies between team members and on other teams. It’s helped me as ScrumMaster to understand better where I could get involved to grease the wheels and help things happen. As for the teams, they feel a little less micro-managed (never the intent, but a common misconception) now that we are reporting on stories, rather then on what I did, will do.

The jury is still out on whether or not it is a more effective means of communication in that 15 minutes, but for the most part it seems to be producing better results. I feel that what I gain as ScrumMaster in helping stories move along, I lose in knowing where the external interference is occurring. I try to watch for where stories aren’t starting or being reported on for multiple days and be a little more investigative then I had to be before.

Anyone have other processes? Success or failures with either of these models?

-Corey Jackson