Agile Quicktip: Budgeting Your Scrum Update Times

Have you ever considered that budgeting time for each team member to give their daily updates might make your daily Scrum more valuable?

One thing that a lot of scrum or agile teams complain about, is getting value out of their daily Scrum. In some cases, team members might be providing too much information or taking up too much of the Scrum time by getting lost in the details. For others, the problem might be that they aren’t giving enough detail. Either way, the value of the Scrum is being lost.

One suggestion is to allocate time for each individual team member’s updates. Be explicit about the amount of time — bring a kitchen timer to the Scrum, or use an online tool like Google Timer to visually indicate the time box and the time remaining. Pick an amount of time for each team member’s update — maybe 60 seconds or 90 seconds — and let them know that this is the time they have to fill.

It can also help to coach your team members to get the most out of their update. They should be communicating their updates not just from the sender’s point of view, but also from the perspective of the receiver.  What’s the message you want your team members to receive from your update? From there, they can work out what to say during their 60 seconds to best communicate that message.

In this way, your daily Scrum only takes ten minutes, or maybe fifteen minutes max, but you’re getting a lot more value out of that time.

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