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Deanna McNeil's avatar

I have had very good success in using the Scrum Facilitators template for exactly the reasons you state.

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Rob's avatar
Jun 23Edited

Hi Maarten,

Here's a format I recently used with Product Owner and a Scrum team - the origin escapes me.

Slide 1: what we thought would happen (our goal)

Slide 2: what actually happened (here's where we show our work)

Slide 3: what we need from you (our biggest questions eg have you had an opportunity to use the app)

Slide 4: what's next (our guess as to the goal)

Why we liked it as a team: it helped communicate our uncertainty to our sponsors and customers attending our reviews. Became easier over time to talk about things going wrong, constraints and get attendees to participate. We got good attendance and in some reviews convinced customers to demonstrate what they liked and did not like about the finished reporting apps. On one occasion the presenter was the sponsor who asked for the work to be done.

The context: a business intelligence team building reporting apps in a government transport agency. One of the challenges they identified when I started was getting stakeholders to care, and show up.

How the story ended:

I am sharing it here because as soon as the project was complete all this team momentum was lost. The team was dispersed to other work. The product owner's contract finished and she left. I am hoping one day the idea of long standing teams sticks. But I cannot see it happening with the current funding model and leadership. This is because of the short term project mindset, and approach to organizing everyone into resource pools. People are thrown at projects typically and then pulled out of them at short notice. The word "delivery" is frequently used, and "value" - rarely.

One thing will endure from the experience: Interviewed by volunteers from outside the project the team involved were enthusiastic about their work and the bonds they made working together. So were the stakeholders. I'll remember this as something I was proud to be part of too.

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