Semicrum - Implementing Scrum at Semingo

After almost 1.5 months of Scrum at Semingo (a baby startup), I decided to expose the way we work at the moment and talk about the adjustments we’ve made in order to suit Scrum to our needs.

I’ll start with our implementation to the Daily Stand-up Meeting. No doubt, our meetings are pretty funny (most of the time) and create the right vibe for the Team. The one thing I love most about our meetings is that by the end of the meeting, I know what is the general work-plan for each member in my Team.

Now it’s easy to know what I’m planning to complete today (I spend 5-10 minutes planning my day before the meeting), when & if I need to finish something earlier (or at least decide about interfaces after the meeting) in order to integrate with others, help out or ask for someone’s else help(code review for example), stay after the meeting in order to talk about something that pop up during the meeting, remove impediments (if I can) and most importantly – have a good laugh before the day begins.

Daily Stand-up Meeting (aka DSM) structure at Semingo:

When: 
Every day at 10:30.
Where:
Meetings room.
Time Box:
15 minutes.
Attendants: 
Pigs only (Chickens can (only) listen)
On the table: 
Each Pig answer these 4(!) questions:
(1) What have I done since the last DSM ?
(2) What am I planning to do until the next DSM ?
(3) Impediments – what bothers me to work ?
(4) Am I on track?
     If someone feels that one of his tasks won’t be finished as planned, a flag is raised so the Team could assist. 
     The same goes if someone feels that he’s going to finish before the expected time. 
     This means that he could help out someone else or take a few extra tasks we did not plan for the current iteration.

Notes:
Only one Pig talks at a time and he leads the conversation if reasonable questions comes up. He (alone) has the power to stop a conversation if he feels the conversation stray from the DSM path. Team members can decide to talk about an issue that was raised during the DSM just after the meeting is finished.

What next (DSM planned improvements)?
(1) You late, you get (punished, that is): each team member that late to the DSM must wear the “I was late to DSM, I will serve you coffee today” sign on his shirt.
(2) Red-Back on track: If the conversation is getting out of control (too many jokes, drill-down conversations, more than 1 Pig talk etc) – the red button is clicked and each Team member is being electrified with 120V. Well no, but it could have been a nice feature right? Clicking the red button will make a nice GONG!! so we could move on. The Team agree to listen to the GONG and get back on track, so we could finish in time and keeping the DSM productive.