4 Scrum Tips - Basic things that can build a great team!

I think the key to any great team is great communication. But to communicate well, you have to know each other well. What I mean by communicating well, is that you don't just talk clearly or listen well, but you actually understand exactly what the other person is trying to say and you're on the same page!

Tip 1: The Daily Challenge Question.

One really easy thing you can do to help the team get to know each other better, is to ask one random question every single day at stand-up for the team to share with each other. By doing this every day, after working together for months you will learn a lot about each other that you never would have known! It really does help to build a good relationship and communicate well, when you know each other well.

How can you easily implement this?

• Here is a list of over 100 questions
• You can copy all of these questions into a OneNote page
• Set a daily reminder for yourself
• Choose one question and highlight it as green, so you don't reuse it in future
• Each morning about 30mins before the stand-up, post the question in your teams chat channel via Slack or MS Teams or whatever you use.
• Then when you kick-off the stand-up, you ask the usual questions and also include today's daily challenge question for the team to answer.

If you're thinking that there is not enough time, or if you already find it hard to keep stand-ups to 15mins without adding in an additional question... That brings us to the next Tip!

Tip 2: Remind the team who the stand-up is for and re-approach it.

If you are the scrum master or the person who 'runs' the daily stand-ups, how often do you have to speak to keep things moving? The best answer should be hardly ever. If you have to constantly speak after each update and move things on to the next person, then the team might be giving their updates to you rather than to each other. Try this experiment at the next stand-up. After the first person does their update, just stay silent and see how long it takes before someone says "hello are you there?" or "oh sorry, I'm done, who's next?". Then just stay silent a bit longer and if no-body start's speaking, just ask "ok who's next?". This may be the longest weirdest stand-up you are ever in but just let it happen, then at the end just stop and let the team know that you were staying silent on purpose and ask this question... "What do you think is the purpose of this stand-up and who do you think it is for?". If anyone answers by saying it is for the SM or the PO, then as a team you need to re-look at the purpose and explain that it is for everyone on the team so that you can all get on the same page, get what you need from each other and have an awesome day!

If you as the SM are constantly speaking and moving on to the next person's updates, you are spending at least a few minutes in each stand-up that is just wasted time. You are probably asking things like "do you need anything else?" "are you done" "Ok thanks person 1, how about you person 2, how's it going?". Instead, try this approach... Ask each person to memorise the person after them, whether this is alphabetical order or based on the JIRA board swimlanes, or based on role, or even just a random order. Create an order, ask each person to memorise who is next, ask that when they are done with their update to say "over to you 'Person's name'". Of-course you will still need to get involved, help keep things on track and help with any blockers. But the majority of the time it will go much quicker.

If you are still finding that you are taking longer than 15mins, you can try another Tip!

Tip 3: Implementing 'Huddles'

If you find the updates start to get off track and maybe seem more like a team meeting or project discussion, you can set some clear boundaries and implement a new concept of a 'huddle' for any extra conversation that may only involve a few people in the team. You also need to reinforce a few basics for the team to follow.

For example:

1. You don't need to mention that you went to meetings.
2. You don't need to talk about all the things in a week that are happening.
3. You just need to focus on what you got done yesterday. It doesn't matter if you didn't get anything done. If you say that you were trying to get something done but it's taking longer and you still need to do it today, at least then the rest of the team know and if anyone was waiting on this from you, they can move onto something else for the day.
4. You need to focus on telling the team what you are trying to get done today, but not all the details about how and why.
5. Most importantly, call out what you need from anyone else in the team for today so you can keep moving with your work. If anything is holding you up, you can get the help straight away after the stand-up.

While doing the update's if there are any issues raised, any help needed or just time to discuss things, this is where you can implement the huddle. The basic concept is if someone needs help or needs to discuss something with another team member, you say "ok, person 1 and person 2 (possibly person 3), let's huddle after stand-up on that issue but let's keep moving now", then instead of having a 5-10min discussion in the stand-up where only 2-3 people are involved and using up the team's time, (which could be possibly 9-12 or more people) you finish the stand-up so the 9 or so other people can leave, and the 2-3 people can stay to discuss things further. This way if your stand-up usually goes for an extra 10mins each day, the majority of the team gets 10mins back. Multiply that by a week, then multiply that by the number of team members saving time and you can easily get 9 people X 10 mins X 5 days = 450mins of working time per week for the team. You might have a few different scenario's so here are some approaches for each.

Scenario 1 - Only 2 or 3 people need to discuss one issue: This is easy. When the issue is identified, quickly mention that we will cover it in a huddle, finish the stand-up, let the rest of the team leave and then keep the 2 or 3 people needed to have the discussion.

Scenario 2 - There are multiple issues identified but each requires different people: This is also easy. When the issues are identified, mention that we will cover it in a huddle and take a note of who needs to be involved to resolve it, finish the stand-up, then split up into multiple huddles. Do a quick reminder on the 2-3 issues, confirm who needs to be involved in each issue, have one group stay in the same spot, assign one person from the next group to start the next huddle (either via a call or by moving to another space), then assign one person from the last group to start the last huddle via call or moving to another space, let the remaining people from the team leave.

Scenario 3 - There are multiple issues and the same key people are needed for multiple issues: This is a bit more challenging but still easily manageable. When the issues are identified, mention that we will cover it in a huddle and take note of who needs to be involved to resolve it, finish the stand-up, then prioritise what the most urgent thing is to huddle about. A good question to ask is, "is this blocking anyone from doing their work today?" If it's a 'yes' then focus on that first. If multiple issues are blocking multiple project's today, then prioritise based on the highest priority project. Once you've quickly gotten the priority order, make a plan to do the first huddle and when the key people needed for the second issue are done, they will notify the remaining people and begin the second and potentially third huddle. Let the rest of the team leave and begin the first huddle with the first group.

Scenario 4 - There are multiple issues, the same key people are needed and nobody has any time because there are back to back meetings after stand-up: This is exceptionally challenging and people will be stressed, you must make good decisions quickly. When the issues are identified mention that we will cover it in a huddle, and take note of who needs to be involved to resolve it and finish the stand-up. Let any of the team leave who are not needed. When everyone else is saying they don't have time and have other meetings, first ask "are any of these things mentioned in stand-up, blocking anyone from getting what we need to get done today?". If it's a 'yes', then ask "are any of these other meetings critical for projects we are currently working on?", "If you don't go will it cause any issues?", "Are they for future or lower priority projects?". If the meetings are not critical and not for any current or higher priority projects, then encourage the team to decline and reschedule so we can focus on resolving the issues that actually are blocking our current work. Support the team and help contact any of the meeting's organisers to explain why we need the time to resolve high priority issues, and they will need to reschedule. Start the first huddle, have the important discussions and resolve issues and then have a good day!

Tip 4: Have fun, regularly!

It's important to still have fun and have a laugh as a team. After a stressful week or in the middle of a couple of stressful week's, taking time each week to catch up and have a laugh is a good way to chill out and reconnect with each other. It's important to do this every single week. Making it a regular thing means it's not a big deal if sometimes a few people can't make it, the option is always there and it always goes ahead with whoever is keen. The usual approach would be to go out for drinks, but not everyone drinks and if people start talking about work problems then you're not really relaxing and probably not laughing much. It's probably not ideal to encourage drinking every single week, so an alternative is to try a 'Friday afternoon Games' catch-up (Drinks optional). It has actually become easier to do since working from home. There are a lot of fun games that you can play via a zoom video call, some using screen sharing and some just using mobile phone app's.

Here are some free games that work well over a Zoom call:

• Sketchful is easily the best online version of Pictionary, easy to set up and always gets some laughs! - https://sketchful.io/
• Virtual Bingo, it's a classic and an easy one to set up - https://myfreebingocards.com/virtual-bingo. You can go a step further and learn the Bingo Calls , or make things interesting and take it in turns letting people call out any number they want (you just can't call out a number if it's going to make you win a row).
• Scattergories is another easy one to set up, it can be a bit confusing when you first play but get's easier after a couple of rounds when getting the hang of it - https://scattergoriesonline.net/
• Head's Up is an app that the group will need to download, it doesn't take long to set up and it's funny watching people trying to hold their phone on their forehead so everyone can see on Zoom, but also having to keep their eye's closed so they can't see! - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heads-up/id623592465
• Psych is a lot of fun and guarantees a lot of laughs! - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/psych-outwit-your-friends/id1005765746
• Trivia might be overdone now, but it's an easy one if you're out of other options - Online Trivia
• Kahoot is a good option to get to know the team better. At the start of the week you can ask everyone in the team to share one thing that nobody else would know, then create a quiz using everyone's secret fact and adding the one correct person as an answer, and three other team members names - https://kahoot.com/

To implement this:

• Set up a recurring calendar invite for a time on Friday afternoon
• Advise that it's an optional weekly time to catch up and have some fun as a team
• Invite everyone in the team
• Add in a virtual meeting link (Zoom / MS Teams etc)
• Make a note that the weekly game will be confirmed on the day
• Then each week on the Friday, pick a game and update the invite with the game link details and also post a reminder in your team chat channel and check to see who is keen to join!

The wrap up!

After trying all sorts of things over the years, these are some approaches that I believe can be really effective to build a great team by:

• Learning something new about each other every day and becoming more connected, which improves communication
• Making the stand-up's quicker and more effective
• Getting the team to talk to each other rather than update the SM
• Utilising huddles to save massive amount's of the teams time each week
• Taking time to have fun!

Hopefully, some of these tips can help you and if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.