Australian Scrum Community

“The daily scrum is for the team” is such a simple notion, but always hard to bring to reality. In most workplaces you are told who you report to – team leader, manager, director, board, shareholders. So when the first scrum is held everyone talks to the scrum master, as they are the boss. Whereas in Scrum the team needs to be their own boss.

Recently I started daily stand up meetings as the first step in the transition to scrum in my new workplace. Of course everyone reported the PM, which is great for the ego, but no good for the team. After a week of telling everyone “Don’t report to the PM, report to each other” I had got us to the same place we started at.

I found a stress-toy shaped like a rugby ball and decided to bring it to the next stand up.

When all were gathered I held aloft the ball and announced that we would now report to the holder of the ball, then threw it across the room to whomever was standing there. The result was nearly all of the team reported to the ball holder.

Currently we can’t hold the stand up without the ball. In the near future we should be able to hold stand up without the ball and actually report to each other. (Of course I am not the first to do this…check this out )