Scrum of Scrums (archive version)

A short, weekly, document-driven meeting for cross-team communication. Inspired by the Daily Scrum, the Scrum of Scrums (herein SoS) is an attempt to scale scrum to the entire project. For the SoS meeting an ambassador from each team - someone wants to do it, is available and has a decent overview of team activities. The ambassador for any given team can and should change. Each ambassador completes their teams section of the SoS pre-meeting summary describing their teams status; what has been done, what they are doing and anything they need help with. This summary should be completed one hour before the SoS meeting as all ambassadors should read the document beforehand. The first 15 minutes of the meeting are spent expanding upon the team statuses and the next 15 minutes are spent identifying solutions, collaboration opportunities, etc. The summary should then be published to all members of the project.

SoS pre-meeting summary templates

Every first and third Monday (in calendar);

Until 11:00 - Ambassadors fill in SoS summary.
11:00 to 12:00 - Ambassadors read over SoS summary.
12:00 to 12:15 - SoS meeting: ambassadors expand on team statuses.
12:15 to 12:30 - SoS meeting: ambassadors find solutions, collaboration opportunities, etc.
12:30 to 13:00 - Meeting minutes are finished and with SoS summary published to wiki blog.

Background and rationale

Cross-team communication has been a recurrent topic, being mentioned in some form or another in every project-wide retrospective/reflective to date (Retrospective - WuppDays #1, Retrospective - WuppDays #2, WuppDays #6 retrospective, Rotterdam reflective, Sprint #6 (WD7-S1) Retrospective).

Cross-team communication was attempted at the beginning of the project by the Coco - this lasted for about two months but then died. The notes from the Coco meetings and suggested reasons that led to the abandonment of the Coco can be found here.

The short and regular SoS format aims to provide a manageable and sustainable way to achieve the communication needed to help identify where help is needed and avoid work duplication. It could be motivating for current contributors and the rest of the world to see what is being achieved even before the webapp is online. It could help bring in new contributors by letting them know we need help (and specifically what type) and also by providing a current status for those corresponding with applicants to refer to.

meta

Type: event
Phase: Celebration, Dreaming, Planning
Works well with: large groups
Incompatible with:
Part of: yunity Scrum
Requires:
Made easier with: A facilitator