The most common form of daily scrum meeting follows the format of:
- What I did yesterday
- What I am doing today
- What my impediments are
Every team member takes their turn, gives a brief update and quickly switches off to the rest of the meeting. You've probably experienced it yourself, and like many people, you've found it becomes very routine, rarely truly highlights any issues, and everyone starts to resent having to attend.
Instead, why not try the Walking the Board method?
What is Walking the Board? Instead of each person taking a turn to discuss what they have done, each ticket or issue takes a turn to update on their progress.
I know what you're thinking, tickets cannot talk, and you're right. The team members of course still do the talking, but instead, you work your way through the open tickets asking for updates on each one. The team then provide an update on the progress and any blockers.
One key thing here is not to fall into the direct question trap. Do not say "Jack give the team an update on this ticket", because Jack might not be the only person who has important information about that issue. This is what I mean when I say the tickets take it in turn to give the update.
Leaving it open as to who should speak up helps to keep everyone focused on the meeting, rather than the traditional daily scrum method of giving your update and then checking your emails whilst the meeting carries on.
One problem that does sometimes occur is that you have someone who doesn't speak in the meeting. Previously everyone took their turn, so everyone spoke, but when focusing on the tickets you could miss someone.
Now that doesn't mean that they are not working and not contributing to the team, it might be they are pair coding with someone. So you do have to ensure that if people are working together both parties speak up. Often simply having the lead person on the ticket prompting their co-coder is enough, "So that is everything from me, I'm working on this with Jack, have you got anything to add Jack?".
Walking the Board does bring a fresh new way to run your daily scrum meetings, and helps keep the team much more engaged. Why not give it a try?
❓Do you follow the Walking the Board method, does it work for you? Perhaps you have a completely different method for daily scrum meetings, tell us about it!
Top comments (0)