Scrum - a day at the zoo
"Agile Monkeys Gone Wild" is an interesting article which you can find at
http://www.jacoozi.com/blog/?p=12. A colleague of mine pointed us to the article and a thread of email started growing, debating whether or not the content could be related to our implementation of the Agile Scrum methodology in some of our projects.
Instead of joining the debate, I decided to introduce some wild monkey potion into one of our projects, which is nearing the end of the construction phase and is thus filled with hard working and at times stressed out developers and testers. When the team gathered for the scrum, their scrum master was not present (still swimming in a family relay at the school gala) ...which I guess was a relief in itself ... but they were instructed to jump in their cars and to meet up at our local zoo for a 2-3 hour scrum session, strolling through the zoo, de-stressing and venting the developer and tester tensions.
I eventually joined them ... my two older sons and I made third place at the gala ... and we enjoyed every minute of the break in routine and visiting the monkeys and elephants mentioned in the above mentioned article.
What I realised after the event is that a simple change in the "program", a pinch of extra agility, has injected a boost of additional enthusiasm and team spirit in the team.
When your team looks tired and/or frustrated, when the bug convergence is not in sight or technical challenges seem insurmountable, then consider a trip to your local zoo, or for those at the coast a trip to the local aquarium ... you may be as surprised of the outcome as I was.