Best Tips for Holding the Daily Scrum Online
This spring COVID-19 caused companies around the world to close offices and have all employees working online. While for many of you, working online is business as usual, a lot of people have never had to work this way before.
The Agile Manifesto says the best way to work is with “face-to-face communication.” So how do agile teams in quarantine maintain this connectedness to their team?
In a recent thread in the Agile Mentors Community, we had members share their best tips for holding the Daily Scrum online while still maintaining the agile principle of “face-to-face communication” despite being in different physical locations.
Here’s what our community members had to say:
Play a Game
A Scrum Master in Scotland says playing a Pass the Baton game with his team keeps them engaged. Here’s how to play:
* Use Zoom for Teams to hold the meeting.
* View the participants in grid view (3 or 4 people per row, and 3 or 4 people per column) with cameras enabled.
* Pass a virtual baton or token to the person next to you, down from you or up from you and have them provide the next update to the team about their commitment toward the sprint goal.
* The person with the baton can move it along their camera toward the person they want to give the next update to and that person can receive it, so long as everyone has something that can be regarded as a token.
Allow Time for Connecting
Several members said that keeping up personal connections with team members is really valuable, so they allow people to say after the Daily Scrum and chat about anything on their minds.
A Scrum Master from the United Kingdom says, “I think there’s a balance to be found between maintaining the usual discipline of the Daily Scrum and allowing for the extra need to chat. My preferred approach is to rattle through the traditional Daily Scrum at a healthy pace, declare it to be over, but then let other conversations start up.”
He notes several benefits from this approach including:
- It retains the discipline of the Daily Scrum, so it won’t be so hard to get back to normal when we eventually return to the office.
- It allows people to drop off the call at the end of the Daily Scrum if they want to get on with something.
- It keeps the Daily Scrum engaging.
Another member from Colorado adds, “I want my team to feel and know that I care about how they’re doing through all of this, so always take a bit of time to check in on a personal level.”
Just Have Fun
A Scrum Master from Virginia says the key to his successful Daily Scrums are having fun with the team.
“We have fun with it. There has been a lot of toying around with interesting virtual backgrounds, unsuspecting noises, lamp light bulb explosions (oh wait that last one wasn’t planned)! At any rate, keeping it light-hearted, open and fun can lead to a lot more interaction.”
He adds that laughter and keeping the tone positive can be really good medicine.
Create a Virtual Whiteboard
An Arizona-based Scrum Master uses a simple Google doc as a virtual whiteboard to collaborate on important information with the team each day.
In addition to the typical Daily Scrum conversations, this team has a “This Day in History” section where they show a fun fact such as on this day in 1968 the movie Space Odyssey 2001 was released.
He’s found this addition to be a fun conversation piece and something his team members look forward to. It also gets them to actually pay attention to the Scrum board!
To join the conversation and to be mentored by more than 4,000 agile practitioners from around the globe, join the Agile Mentors Community. Visit www.agilementors.com for more information on membership.