Australian Scrum Community

So you’re running Scrum on your project and you have a burn down chart, a sprint back log and everything is ticking along nicely, or is it? Do you have trouble getting developers to update the sprint backlog? Do they still loose focus of the end of sprint date? Maybe the management keep asking you how things are going, even though they have access to your sprint burn down on the network.

These could be symptoms of an electronic Scrum process. By electronic Scrum process I mean you have sprint data held electronically in say Excel or Visual Studio Team System, your developers and management are required to access these over the network as and when they need to (or more than likely when they feel like it), in reality this just doesn’t work reliably enough. How many times have you heard a developer shut down his pc shortly followed be him grunting “damn I haven’t updated my estimates” by which point it’s too late, he’s going to miss his bus, taxi or a beer!

Then we come to management, ever heard your manager respond with “ah yes I know you sent me a link to it somewhere I just couldn’t find it, and as I was walking past anyway…”

The solution: The team whiteboard

By all means keep your data electronically, I do, but create a team whiteboard with the following basic items:

• The sprint burn down chart.
• The task estimates sheet (sprint view – used to drive the burn down chart).
• A pen to update the sprint view.
• The number of days remaining in the sprint – I print this big number on one piece of A4.
• Task cards, divided into 3 columns (or more) , Todo, In progress and done.

This “kills two birds with one stone” by providing a highly visible progress gauge to all team members and management AND allowing the team to easily update the board, either during the day or as they are walking out the door.

All that needs to be done by the Scrum master then, is to come in the morning, grab the estimate sheet off the board, update the electronic version and reprint that and the burn down chart, and off course update the “days to go” number.