Danube - Story Time! The Hidden Scrum Meeting - Comments

variation

MichaelJames — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:03:47 -0600

I like to do the same thing using a subset of the team for the first half of the meeting, usually the Product Owner plus key people who are particularly interested in requirements and skilled at splitting epics.

Then bring the whole team in for the estimation portion.

--mj

Michael James
Software Process Mentor
http://www.danube.com

Perhaps there is another issue?

Jason Lewis — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:37:07 -0500

I have generally referred to this as story scrubbing, but I also feel like there is a problem with some other practice...most likely with on-site customer (or the customer proxy role), customer driven priority or story writing in general.

not meetings

Tobias Mayer — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:53:54 -0600

Victor, I get around that problem by introducing the idea that these are "work sessions", i.e. part of development. Language can change the way we think. I posted something about this to scrumdevelopment recently, here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scrumdevelopment/message/27380

This was a great post Kane, an important on. I agree completely that the Story Time meeting should be considered part of "standard Scrum".

Tobias

Great idea

VictorSzalvay — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:12:27 -0600

Kane,
I'm glad you aired this. Our team does a single Story-Time meeting per two-week sprint. It does in fact help to stream-line the planning meeting process. I also agree that the Story-Time meeting should be made an explicit part of Scrum (add to the books as formal part of the process).

On the flip side, some team members have voiced a concern with the shear quantity of meetings given a two-week sprint (Sprint Planning, Daily Standup meetings, Detailed requirements sessions, Story Time meetings, Sprint Demo meetings, etc.). Looking at the list, I can sympathize, but unless someone comes up with a way to communicate via telepathy I think we're stuck having to set time aside for face-to-face communication.

I would take the productivity benefits of a healthy Scrum environment (meetings and all) over the alternatives.

Great article.
-- Victor

Story Time! The Hidden Scrum Meeting

KaneMar — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:58:24 -0600

Is your team having difficulty forecasting when a project will be completed? Do you have a large number of un-estimated Stories in your product backlog? Are your planning meetings several days long and full of confrontation? If so, it could be that you're forgetting to "groom" your product backlog.