How To Make The Most Of Your Scrum Meetings

One cannot emphasize enough the need for regular scrum meetings. These daily meetings are 15-20 minutes in length on an average and the aim of such programs is to keep the members of the project on course and informed. Successful scrum project management involves focus on team collaboration and quick review of status and successful communication of different challenges.

In order to make the most of your scrum meetings it is necessary to consider these points.

A proper setup

One of the first prerequisites of a successful agile scrum meeting is the presence of proper setup for the same. Ideally, the meeting should be short. Any more than 15 to 20 minutes and you will find a concentration of members wavering and this in turn brings down the success levels substantially. The best time for conducting such meetings is the mornings, when the work and stress of the day has not taken its toll yet on the participants.

Restrict the level of comfort

Interestingly enough, the comfort level for the participant at a meeting, increases the chances of success. Therefore, if you can, conduct the meeting with everybody standing up instead of sitting down. Once everybody sits down, there is a propensity to relax and interact with each other for no reason, making the occasion less formal. You cannot afford to do this in a meeting of such short durations.

Use visual aids

Successful scrum agile project management is very much possible when you use visual aids to reinforce the information being shared during the meeting. It should include current task list, presence of burn down charts that depict total remaining hours in the current sprint, and the development time cycles. This clarifies the situation for the members and help them to know about the meeting in a clear manner.

Ensure participation

You want to ensure the success of your scrum meeting and make sure that every member remains present on a daily basis. This is true for general members as well as team facilitator, product manager, Scrum Master, and product owner. It is important to remember that when it comes to a scrum meeting there is no clear-cut leader and everyone present has an equal voice to share. The function of the Scrum Master is to set up the meeting and members may ask questions as and when required.

Know about the scope

When you are conducting scrum meetings, it is very important to know the goal of such endeavors. The aim is team synchronization with focus on current Sprint. The meeting discusses the past work of every member and the current project besides dealing with the related roadblocks. One of the aims of such meetings may be agile software development. While troubleshooting issues is all right, concentrating too much on problem solving may take away the focus from the main aim of such meetings. Therefore striking the correct balance is vital.

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About The Author

Tim Mitchel is a renowned software developer and is considered to be an authority on the various software testing methodologies and quality assurance. He likes to share his knowledge and talk about various aspects of the field in the many informative articles he writes.

Tim Mitchel is a renowned software developer and is considered to be an authority on the various software testing methodologies and quality assurance.