At Melbourne Business School, we’ve started using Scrum to manage our software development projects. Over the last few months, we’ve used it very loosely on a project as a trial run. The elements we picked up were the very basics of scrum. I’m nervous to even say that we were “doing scrum”. Even so, the results were so much better than I expected, and we completed our project ahead of schedule.

In the beginning …

The daily stand-up meeting was the first “ceremony” we instigated. It’s quite simple, we meet every morning for 5 – 10 minutes, standing up and we each answer three questions: what did you do yesterday, what will you do today, what obstacles are you facing?

The idea is that people want to get it over with quicker if they’re forced to stand up during a meeting. It really does tend to keep us focused and to the point.

It took a little while for people to warm to the idea initially, but we soon developed a bit of a rhythm. People were keeping to their time limits, mentioned salient points only and our ability to actually get stuff done increased considerably.

Most interestingly to me, was the new opportunities this created for the team. The opportunity to share every day has made it easier for us to offer help to each other when obstacles come about. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that the 10 minutes invested in the stand-up has returned us numerous hours a week of muddling through things as individuals.

Now …

Lately however, things have started to become more like a status meeting. Going through the three questions just because that’s what we so. I realise now that keeping this meaningful and actionable is not a trivial task. It’s even more challenging for us as the team is constantly working on multiple projects. Sometimes what you’re working on really doesn’t effect anyone else in the team.

We may be headed for “Daily Standup Withdrawal.”

Stacia from the Scrum Alliance writes:

Many teams really, truly believe that the purpose of the daily standup is to “just answer the three questions without exceeding fifteen minutes.” Maybe it’s that the questions (what did you do yesterday, what will you do today, what obstacles are you facing) seem so simple. They are not. There is so much underneath the surface of the three little questions. Coach your team to think about these questions and come prepared to the daily standup [...]

In other words, think about the tasks, the accomplishments, how it may impact John’s work or Mary’s next task, and keep in mind who you are working with to complete the task. Go into the daily standup with answers to the three questions that are meaningful, insightful, and proactive.

Later …

Taking on some advice from that article, I intend to spend some time actively coaching and giving more feedback to the team members. I also need to ensure I don’t contract the same disease myself. A bit of team reflection may be in order too.

Disclaimer

To date, I have avoided writing much about my work environment. Having thought about this quite a lot lately, I believe the net effect of writing about such things will be a positive one. So, it now needs to be stated that this clearly is a personal blog. The view and opinions I express here are my own and not those of the people, institutions, or organisations that I may be related with.

I love to be inspired. Especially by great thoughts and ideas. TED does this for me, every time.

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

- About TED

If you haven’t watched any of these videos, then you really should. I’ve found them to be some of the most inspiring and thought provoking talks. Here’s a few of my favourites:

• Do schools kill creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson. A very humorous and inspired challenge to our notions of education.
• A journey to the centre of your mind by Vilayanur Ramachandran. A fascinating view into the way our minds work when impaired by some very specific mental disabilities.
• My stroke of insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. Jill’s a brain scientist and has had an amazingly unique experience – she was able to analyse her own stroke as it occured.

Take some time out of your day and listen to a few TED talks. You’ll be glad you did it.

When can you expect the unexpected? When your crystal ball is working at full pelt.

I received this email yesterday from a vendor we do some work with:

Subject: ACME Corp. will experience an unexpected power outage tomorrow between 8 am and 12

Dear Client,

We have been notified of an unexpected power outage in between the hours of 8 am and 12 noon, Thursday 15th May, 2008. This means that we will be without power, network and phones.

I’m hoping to get them to visit our site to help us predict any unexpected issues we might have with our own systems.

@ameel’s recent tweet prompted me to drag up some blog posts I used to read on sleeping. I’m a big fan of this activity, but in my many years of practice, I have yet to master the technique.

The article Ameel pointed me to is about catching up on lost sleep. I used to have a tendency of waking up quite early in the morning, looking at my clock and then worrying about not getting enough sleep for the remaining hours before my alarm went off.

This behaviour cost me considerable hours of this precious resource. I would continually watch the clock and cause myself worry about how little time I had left to sleep.

The solution? I changed my behaviour and stopped looking at my clock. Now, when I wake up in the dark hours, I just turn around and treat myself to more sleep. I no longer worry about the time and how much of it I have left.

By doing this, I have trained my body to fall back asleep quickly. So whether I have 2 hours or 30 minutes left before my alarm goes off, I make the best use of it without worry and with some good quality rest.

If you’re interested in reading more about sleep patterns and the like, then Steve Pavlina has written a number of articles on this. It’s a great log of his personal experiments with getting up early and Polyphasic Sleep. I just wish I had the time to spend playing around with this stuff.

(I stopped reading his blog when he began crapping on too much about “intention manifestation”. Something I have written briefly about before.)

This is from an article written in November 1968 in the Mechanix Illustrated. It’s an article on what life would be like on November 18, 2008.

Some of it is pretty close to being spot on. Other bits sadly haven’t yet eventuated. Wish I got flown to work in a car, worked a 4 hour day, holidayed at an underwater resort and had a housewife who made my microwave dinner for me!

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Hat tip: Modern Mechanix