Daily scrum meeting for remote teams
As a remote team with dispersed team members, we need to find ways to stay connected, motivated and committed. We thought of borrowing something from Scrum and try it out. It’s the Daily Scrum Meeting or Daily Stand Up and we have decided to try it for 30 days and see if we like it or not.
The Daily Scrum is:
Daily Scrum
Each day during the sprint, a project status meeting occurs. This is called a “daily scrum”, or “the daily standup”. This meeting has specific guidelines:
- The meeting starts precisely on time.
- All are welcome, but only “pigs” may speak
- The meeting is timeboxed to 15 minutes
- The meeting should happen at the same location and same time every day
During the meeting, each team member answers three questions:
- What have you done since yesterday?
- What are you planning to do today?
- Do you have any problems preventing you from accomplishing your goal? (It is the role of the Scrum Master to facilitate resolution of these impediments. Typically this should occur outside the context of the Daily Scrum so that it may stay under 15 minutes.)
We are a remote team and we had to tweak it a little to fit our needs:
- Every morning at 10:00am we go to a Skype group chat that is only used for our Daily Scrum Meetings
- Each one of us says what they did yesterday, what they plan to accomplish today and mention any problems they have.
- Problems are then discussed after the meeting.
- The meeting never lasts more than 20 minutes.
Results are positive so far. First of all, we feel that someone hears what we do everyday. If we have any problems or questions we can ask our fellow team members for help. We are committed because we promise a daily plan and we want to deliver it. We stay focused. All that, by spending 20-30 everyday to plan our day and present that plan to our colleagues.
References:
I luv these meetings, both the remote ones and the ones we have at the office. I think it’s good for the team to communicate.
I do prefer holding them at the end of the day though, as it allows me for tackling problems that might have occurred early on and everyone has still fresh in their minds what they’ve achieved for the day.
I still fail to keep these meetings to under 15 mins though! We often hit the 30m mark :S
M.
Yes the 15 minute limit is a challenge, especially if the communication is done using IM as we do. However, we really try to keep it as short as possible. Holding them at the end of the day is an interesting idea. Holding them first thing in the morning helps with planning. We also know that right after the meeting we might reserve some time for collaborating and helping resolve any problems. Of course one could ask for help any time of the day, although we try not to interrupt each other too often.