ScrumU

Monthly Open Meeting

Friday, October 23, 2009
1:30 – 2:30 PM EST
Teleconference

Attendees:
Dick McMullen - Minnesota State Colleges and Universities
Lynn Secreast and Don Rankins – Appalachian State University
Pat Miller – University of Notre Dame
Rich Loftus and Lori Sundal – Georgia Institute of Technology
Kristine Shannon - K Shannon Assoc.
Ken Radlick - Grand Valley State
Renetta Brown - University of Alabama

Question 1
Do any schools have examples of doing a Scrum with multiple Product Owners? If so, have those Scrums been successful? How do you resolve issues where there is a disagreement between the multiple product owners.

Kristine, when at Wake Forest, had this experience. It's ideal to have one product owner to make decisions if at all possible. It's much easier for team to go forward and decisions are made more quickly. Both product owners were involved in daily meetings and demos. One positive side effect may be that campus starts to appreciate one another. Notre Dame also has experience with multiple project owners. Working ok and product owners are reaching agreements between themselves. Kristine suggests that you can deal with this in the retrospect also and make adjustments as necessary. Minnesota has a terrible problem with this and it's their #1 challenge with moving to agile. Agile says you have to fix this challenge, and they are not sure if it can be fixed any better than what they've done. They serve all public colleges and universities in Minnesota. The only way they found to solve this is to form user groups and charge them to make decisions. They charter the group formally, you must show up, speak as one voice and they do publish decisions. There are a couple of areas where this is working.

Question 2
How do schools handle Scrums where there are remote scrum team participants? Pros, Cons, lessons learned?

Minnesota does this regularly. If you have to work remotely then they see agile works better. They use the product Mingle for workboard - assignments and cards are online, they are collaborating online with Webex & conference calls. Kristine re-iterated this and says it works well for product owners so they don't have to always come to meetings. Georgia Tech is concerned that it could be a barrier and wonders if remote work should be changed during Scrums. Since we are new he asked if any experiences when first starting - getting over hump. Instant Messaging may help with more effective communications. Kristine noted that changing existing work schedules may create a general stigma about scrum. Rich noted that some folks have decided to come in on their own as they find it easier. Minnesota - focus is on support. Getting involvement comes from a supportive environment.

Question 3
We foresee possible scrum teams larger than 7 members - does anyone have experiences with larger teams, how do you keep the daily stand up meeting in check? With daily stand ups in general, how do you keep to the rules and keep the rambling at bay?

Minnesota - The team decides how long stand up should be, but he doesn't shut them down if it goes 20 minutes plus. Some discussions are educational. They are not very strict about time as they see ancillary benefits for the whole team. With 15 people on a scrum, you would have to be more strict, they have typical 6 members each day, sometimes 8 at most. GT taking about 20-25 mins with 7 people. Kristine asked if anyone does the $1 if you are late, or sing a song. No one is, but sounded interesting. She also said to ask the team in the retrospect about meeting times and how to be more efficient. Theme - always ask team what they want to do, then they'll do it.

Question 4 -
I am beginning to add more Kanban into my project, so am now using a ScrumBan hybrid methodology and wonder if anyone else has gone this route?

The institution submitting this question was not on the call and no one else had any experiences.

Opened discussion up to additional Ad-Hoc questions -

Minnesota - have been discussing agile in management team, like results and principles and are going to upper management to request funding to hire a coach. Any suggestions on how to use a coach?
Kristine thinks that Cornell had done the coach approach and contact information was provided.

Grand Valley - Ken is interested in how to get started.
Georgia Tech first did education, a series of webinars. We then trained 3 Scrum Masters. They developed Scrum 101 and 201 workshops that gave overview and hands-on non-IT exercises in the mechanics of scrum, including estimating, daily meetings and burndown.
Notre Dame said the strongest thing for them was the Scrum Master training provided by Joe Little and Kristine Shannon. This really caused excitement and motivation.