[teampractices] Scrum of scrums

[Toby Negrin]

Analytics is in.


On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Ken Snider <ksnider at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Operations is absolutely interested in attending.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --Ken.
>
>
> On Sep 20, 2013, at 4:56 PM, Arthur Richards <arichards at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> I'd love to see this become a reality - what teams are interested in
> participating in something like this?
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 6:26 PM, Bryan Davis <bdavis at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello list!
>>
>> Two separate people forwarded this message to me and asked me to a)
>> join the list and b) provide input, so here I am.
>>
>>  I don't have a completely formed argument to provide on this as I am
>> both new to the organization and not currently embedded in a true
>> scrum team, but I'll try to provide some anecdotes from prior
>> practice.
>>
>> > Examples of problems that I think are worth solving:
>> > - Ensuring platform and ops are in the loop on the latest shiny
>> > features you're building
>> > - Surfacing perceived blockers ("we're still waiting on the Varnish
>> > migration til we can release X, so we've moved on to Y")
>> > - Ensuring feature developers are in the loop on new services/APIs
>> > that are being built that can be used by feature devs
>> > - Surfacing questions about prioritization ("Ops: we've been asked to
>> > work on OSM" - "Mobile: we should probably talk to the mobile PM to
>> > figure out how urgent that is")
>>
>> These are exactly the sort of issues that led to implementing scrum of
>> scrums communication at $DAYJOB-1. An additional problem that we faced
>> (and I believe is faced here) was the need to interface scrum teams
>> and non-scrum "consultants" within the organization. In our case,
>> Operations, Accounting, Legal and Customer Services were all
>> "consultant" roles the scrum teams. This means that there were not
>> typically embedded representatives of these groups within the teams
>> themselves.
>>
>> Experimentation is generally needed to determine the right mix of
>> frequency, duration and attendance that produces a good level of
>> communication without a burdensome amount of overhead for the
>> participants. When I have employed this practice previously it was
>> generally a weekly meeting with a duration of 5 minutes per team
>> represented. With a large number of teams (>6) it can be very helpful
>> to scale up by holding a scrum of scrums of scrums rather than
>> attempting to directly interface all teams. It is also useful to form
>> and disband smaller scrum of scrum teams meeting at higher frequency
>> at particular project inflection points such as the last few sprints
>> of a major feature release or the run up to a cutting a new shippable
>> product version.
>>
>> This should be a meeting for pigs[0] meaning that the purpose is not
>> to provide management with yet another view of the roadmap progress of
>> the individual teams. The intent is to surface inter-team issues as
>> early as possible before each team's individual increment is
>> endangered by roadblocks.
>>
>> > In our context, this may be the kind of meeting where note-taking
>> > would be useful. For example, a daily email to engineering@ including
>> > the notes could be helpful. But that's just an idea.
>>
>> A scrum of scrums should be treated as any other scrum team. This
>> means that their workings should be visible and inspectable at all
>> times. There should definitely be tangible artifacts that are
>> available to all members of the organization. At $DAYJOB-1 this took
>> the form of a hallway whiteboard that documented the next week's
>> milestones and current blockers. The scrum of scrums team was
>> responsible for keeping this artifact up to date on at least a weekly
>> basis. In this environment I would imagine that a wiki page would
>> replace the whiteboard to be more accessible to remote staff.
>>
>>
>> [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig
>>
>> Bryan
>> --
>> Bryan Davis              Wikimedia Foundation    <bd808 at wikimedia.org>
>> [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]]  Sr Software Engineer                Boise, ID
>> irc: bd808                                        v:415.839.6885 x6855
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Arthur Richards
> Software Engineer, Mobile
> [[User:Awjrichards]]
> IRC: awjr
> +1-415-839-6885 x6687
>
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