What Causes a Scrum Blackout?

The Queen. Well, almost.

A Royal Visitor

At Twinkl, we were privileged enough to be recipients of the Queen’s Award for International Trade!

Hip, hip hooray!

This meant we had a very important visitor at Twinkl HQ - none other than the Lord Lieutenant of South Yorkshire.

Now, in case you weren’t aware, (I certainly wasn’t) the Lord Lieutenant is the Queen’s personal, Royal Representative, so for all intents and purposes, the Lord Lieutenant was, in fact, the Queen, and should be treated with the respect you would reserve for HM Elizabeth II herself.

Self-Organisation

This is a key emphasis when we talk about Scrum and Agile, teams must self-organise, and what better way to have this shown when the dreaded “we can’t have standups today” message went out.

First of all, I was astounded at how, in such little time, people had come to treasure the opportunity to get together with the rest of the team to discuss what they’re doing for the day, and any issues that have cropped up. People want these meetings!

Now, I’m not saying people didn’t respect the Lord-Lieutenants visit by not congregating around a screen when he was in the room. But what I can tell you is how the teams “went incognito” to hold their stand-ups virtually, via chat, to ensure that they knew what they were doing.

I have to say, my inner rebel loves the idea of teams getting together in a prohibition-style setting to discuss how to get the most out of their day.

It reminded me of the age-old adage.

“We don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone.”

This experience was a little victory for the company, and the teams themselves, taking that ownership, especially by being cheeky and not doing (exactly) as they were told.

Have you ever been proud of a team for not doing what was expected? What unexpected lessons have you taken from being cheeky?