What Fun Thing Did You Do This Past Weekend?
Greg Mester
Author of "Get to the Next Level" (Coming 2025): More Value ??, Time ?, Experience ?? and Fun ??as Agile Coach and Speaker ?? helping People and Businesses grow Profit in their personal lives and business operations.
What Fun Thing Did You Do This Past Weekend?
This is a fun exercise I came up with a few years ago and I have been using it to teach people about daily scrum effectiveness and time box ever since. The last time I did this exercise it took 26 people to cycle through in 8.5 minutes, proving Daily Scrum should not take long. I’m always saying how Scrum and Agile are supposed to help you free up more personal time outside the office so you can have fun. As agile was born out of the days when we were spending way too much time in the office and it is sad to say many still do. I think now with mobiles we never leave the office .
The Exercise is to ask three questions just like in Daily Scrum:
- What Fun Thing did you Do Last Weekend?
- What is the next Fun Thing you Plan to Do?
- Are there any Blockers to prevent you from having Fun?
This can be use to introduce any team to the Daily Scrum and have fun at the same time.
This exercise is supposed to:
- Get people to know each other
- Have some fun
- Prove that Daily Scrum should not take long
Additional twists to this exercise for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters
- As the lead instructor walk around the room so the people learn not to talk to scrum master but each other
- As the lead instructor work your way out of the room and allow the class
- Get the students/team to pick the next person
- Make sure you record how long it takes the team or class to go through the exercise. Then ask the people for estimates as to how long they think it took for everyone to speak
The additional twists are used to teach the class and / or scrum masters in training:
- That a self directed work team can handle the daily scrum without the scrum master
- They learn not to talk to the scrum master
- They learn their estimate of time will probably be incorrect
Many in the class or team might say that it will take a while to get here, however, I would argue that after 1 month the team has done is at least 20 times. If the team can’t do it in a month you will have even bigger problems down the road.
Fun weekend stuff
This blog post can also be found on my blog site:
https://www.gregmester.com/what-fun-thing-did-you-do-this-past-weekend/
Happy Scrumming,
Greg Mester