Daily Stand-ups/SCRUMS

What is A daily SCRUM

a SCRUM is a quick highly structured all team (or all sub team ) meeting that lets everyone know what is going on for each day, and helps ensure that the team is working on the most important work for each day

A SCRUM is only to last exactly 15 minutes and start at the exact time each day (even if all members are not there)

What are the Roles in a SCRUM

• SCRUM Master
  • The Role of the scrum master is to run the Scrum meeting.
  • They ensure the meeting starts exactly on time and last only 15 minutes.
  • They ask each member the 3 questions
    • What did you do yesterday
    • What will you do today
    • What can prevent you from accomplishing that
• The Project Manager(s)
  • The Project Manager is in charge of one or more of the projects being discussed on the scrum
  • Their job is to maintain and organize the kanban board
  • They are the ones physically moving the cards and making the task assignments (after a Member has requested that)
  • They work with the Project Owners (Mentors) to re prioritize the backlog
  • they also ensure all items added to the back log are correctly documented
• The Members
  • The Members do the work and answer the 3 questions
• The Project Owners (Mentors)
  • The Project Owners are the ones that Review and accept a design once a member has said it is ready
  • The Project Owners work with the project manager(s) to re prioritize the backlog each day.

What is a Kanban Board

The Kanban Board is a list of ALL Discrete tasks that need to be done on a project. Each task is represented with a card describing the task, the type of task it is( Coding, Documentation, Fabrication, Design, etc). The Kanban Board can be physical or virtual(Trello/Github).

The Project Manager(s) own the Kanban Board, and ensure that all the tasks are correctly documented, the backlog is correctly prioritized, and all the tasks are in the correct column

The Kanban Board is made up of 3 Columns

1. Backlog
   1. This is where all tasks get placed
   2. the backlog is prioritized so that the most important thing is on the top followed by the next and the next
   3. when a new idea comes up the project managers make a new card for that idea and put it in the back log
2. Work in Progress
   1. This is where all the tasks that are currently in progress go.
   2. tasks should only be in the work in progress column if the team is working and the task is actively being worked on ( once the team leaves for the night all tasks need to go back to the backlog even if they will be picked up the next day)
3. Design Review
   1. These are tasks that the member(s) working them think are done but the Product Owners( Mentors) need to verify these are done successfully before moving to "Done"
   2. Tasks may sit in this column until that project owner can look at the work.
   3. Tasks may go back to the intake if an issue was found.
4. Done
   1. Tasks that are done
   2. look how much work we have done!
5. Scrapped
   1. Tasks that have been scrapped ( but not deleted)

SCRUM Process

Before The Scrum

1. Ideas added to the Backlog
   1. any ideas that people had during the previous meeting or day need to have a task card created and put on the back log
2. Task Cards Updated
   1. Project Manager(s) need to ensure that all the task cards worked the previous day have been updated,
   2. the assignments removed,
   3. and the cards in the Work In Progress moved back to the backlog
3. Backlog Re-prioritized
   1. The Project Manger(s) with the Project Owners go through the backlog and re-prioritize for the day

During the Scrum

The Scrum Master Starts the Meeting each day at the same time. pulling up the kanban board and asking each member present one by one the following 3 questions

1. What did you do yesterday?
   1. if that task is done the SCRUM Master moves it to the next column ( Work in Progress -> Review -> Completed)
2. What will you do today? (look for the top most backlog task you have the skill for)
   1. The Scrum Master Assigns that task to that and put the task in the work in process column
3. What can stop you from accomplishing that task?

After The Scrum

After the scrum is done the Project manager(s) clean up the kanban board ensuring that all the members are assigned to a task and those tasks are in the correct column

After the meeting

Each member needs to update their task card on what they did that day for that task.

The project managers need to move the work in progress cards back to intake for re-prioritization

How to Prioritize

So in this practice the hardest thing may be how do you know what takes priority over what? it is the responsibility of the Project Owner ( mentors and team leaders) to keep the big picture view of the project, while a guide cant give you a definite prescription for what is the most important it can help clear some things up.

1. Anything with an external upcoming due date ( Chairman's essay, Bag Day, Scrimmage, Etc). Put these dates on the cards
2. Look at the Milestone Chart. Treat these self imposed milestones as due dates.
3. Look at your Strategic Goals Matrix. Tasks in direct support of these should go higher. ( ideally all tasks should be in support of these goals)
   1. Abandoning a goal to ensure the success of a higher priority goal is not a bad thing. its a very very good thing.
4. Items with dependencies. The more dependencies and the higher priority those dependencies the higher this moves up