A New Daily Scrum Smell

Smell: The ScrumMaster who always speaks first or last during the Daily Scrum.

Problem: Scrum Development Team need to be reminded about what their focus is or ScrumMaster feels the need to reinforce it. Lack of accountability and ownership from the team.

Scrum & UX @ Bath Scrum User Group

I presented "Scrum & UX" at the Bath Scrum User Group which generated a lot of good discussion and conversation. Thanks to all those who attended. My slides can be viewed here.

Ouija Board Estimation / Seance Sizing

During a training course I ran a few weeks ago, one of the delegates made a joke about the nature of agile estimation in scrum teams resembling a "seance" whereby the team gathers around the table and stares and a number of cards expecting something unnatural to happen.

How true!!

Which gave me an idea which I tried in practice today. I sat the team around a table and put the fibonacci sequences number 1,2,3,5,8,13 and ? around the table in a circle. The product owner then read out the story and the team clarified the acceptance criteria. then the story was placed in the middle of the table and each team member put one finger on the story. Without discussion or argument the story started to move towards the number which reflected it's size.

Not only did it encourage consenus practice for the team, but it was a much quieter, faster way to estimate. We kept the stories on the table grouped against their size for comparision. In an hours session the team estimated their backlog and had some great fun!!

I'll keep that one up my sleeve in future...