9
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Accepted
Can a Scrum Master be effective when working mostly remotely?
There are two major impacts of a remote Scrum Master in my experience.
The first is that meetings like the retrospective and sprint planning are a real challenge. The biggest problems are usually ...
- 19.5k
8
votes
Accepted
questions around "standups" for remote team
It isn't clear from your post if your team is practicing Scrum, so I'll start with general information before going to Scrum.
There is no single right way to run a stand-up meeting. You can call it ...
- 16.9k
6
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Should I ask developers to report hours in daily reports or ask them to keep the task tracking tool we use with this level of detail?
Start with the "why". What information exactly is it that Senior Management is looking for. What are they using that information for?
It could be as simple as wanting to see progress, or open to ...
- 12.5k
6
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Quicker Retrospectives? They are taking longer and are less effective now we are working from home because of COVID
The first item in the Agile Manifesto is:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Your question lists a bunch of tools and asks about more tools, some that are more flexible to use ...
- 15k
5
votes
Quicker Retrospectives? They are taking longer and are less effective now we are working from home because of COVID
A few additional suggestions that we've tried with some success:
To specify seating order, you can do things like:
have everyone roll dice (slack has a D&D dice roller app, use /roll d100 to get ...
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5
votes
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Quicker Retrospectives? They are taking longer and are less effective now we are working from home because of COVID
All the team members can agree on some set of guidelines to help.
We are following these fun guidelines that are working very well for us:
No person can talk for more than 1 minute at a time.
Every ...
- 242
5
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How to encourage more participation in web scrum meetings?
In my experience periods of silence in a retrospective are caused by the following:
The team sees no value in the retrospective
The team is too large and people are uncomfortable talking
The team has ...
- 19.5k
4
votes
How to encourage more participation in web scrum meetings?
I had a similar situation to this, with a distributed team that was getting quite large, and there was a lot of "wasted" time in side conversations, silences, or people needing to be pulled out of ...
- 41
4
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Engaging remote team members in sprint planning
Have you tried using Trello for this? Although we don't have any "permanent" remote workers, we do have several members of the team who work away from the office for months at a time. We have the "...
- 41
4
votes
Product Owner in different time zone from scrum team
Well, one by-the-book answer is: don't.
The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team.
Your attendance is not required. And as long as you do your job in
Ensuring ...
- 8,436
4
votes
Accepted
Is it ok to assign story point with a few developers if new task is added during a sprint?
So, if I understand your question correctly, you are asking if story points are still meaningful if only a few developers (not all) estimate those story points for the work that you need to do in the ...
- 15k
3
votes
Accepted
team building activities for remote team
I'm a fan of using a web conference with video to highlight the team member's individual work environments. Kind of like an MTV Cribs-type virtual tour get together that allows each team member to ...
- 940
3
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Quicker Retrospectives? They are taking longer and are less effective now we are working from home because of COVID
But also, let it be said that most of the software teams that I have worked with over many decades are entirely or partly "remote." (Even within the USA, which is a very big country.) Some people ...
- 1,164
3
votes
Accepted
How can I encourage remote employees to ask for help?
Don't.
You're asking a subjective question - we don't have nearly enough information to provide an answer, but the inference I would draw is that the individual is reluctant to ask for help. You ...
- 8,728
3
votes
team building activities for remote team
From the university courses and companies I was at remotely / with some distance, it was common to use a Facebook Group from where we all would connect and discuss relevant content (updates from the ...
- 2,084
3
votes
How to manage remote developers?
The answers here are good in that they emphasize transparency, setting expectations, testing deliverables, anticipating disengagement, problem anticipation, and tooling. However, I think integrating ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Should I ask developers to report hours in daily reports or ask them to keep the task tracking tool we use with this level of detail?
I'd expand on Joel BC answer - 'why' is the key, and being from a very similar environment (multi location / cultural place with hundreds of people reporting to a single head) I believe that ...
- 8,615
2
votes
How to work in Implementations when your technical operations is in another time zone?
First of all, what's the difference between 'remote' and 'local' PM? Where these two roles differ? As the question stands, it looks like just you have a redundant position on the main office while the ...
- 8,615
2
votes
Should I ask developers to report hours in daily reports or ask them to keep the task tracking tool we use with this level of detail?
Well.. Your question caption states that you're wondering if you should use daily reports in your team, however as it turns out to be, you cannot decline using such the reports and the issue is ...
- 315
2
votes
Difficulties meeting client face-to-face
One of the keys to a successful meeting is having the right people in the room. That seems obvious but it's amazing how often it doesn't happen and you find yourself saying 'that's a question for Jane ...
- 2,071
2
votes
Can a Scrum Master be effective when working mostly remotely?
The real question is, can the team work remotely. Of all the roles, the Scrum Master is not more or less dependent on good communication than the other roles. At least not if they work as a team. Sure,...
- 8,436
2
votes
Quicker Retrospectives? They are taking longer and are less effective now we are working from home because of COVID
You will have to realize that video conferencing is a far cry from a face-to-face meeting. Almost all the non-verbal communication that takes place in a face-to-face meeting goes out the door in a ...
- 2,760
2
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Is there a terminology for projects spanning across multiple time zones?
There's the term Virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) which defines the ones made up of people in different physical locations.
One can also ...
- 2,084
2
votes
Necessity to micro manage off shore developers
Agile is very much built around trust and empowerment. Micromanaging and trying to 'catch out' teams is incompatible with this.
Some of the effects of the current approach include:
By providing top-...
- 19.5k
2
votes
Quicker Retrospectives? They are taking longer and are less effective now we are working from home because of COVID
You can take a look at https://funretro.io/ service. You can share the board in advance so that team adds their points in advance. This will speed up the retrospective. This service offers several ...
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2
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Selecting ( "Cherry picking" ) certain Agile practices as IT team works remotely? Or is it All Or Nothing with Agile?
Or Is it always All Or Nothing with Agile practices?
Agile is a set of values and principles, a mindset of how to develop software. You can create your own version of Agile methods, it's not just ...
- 15k
2
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Selecting ( "Cherry picking" ) certain Agile practices as IT team works remotely? Or is it All Or Nothing with Agile?
Agile doesn't prescribe any practices - it's all about you choosing how you work because it suits your situation. Particular methodologies though can be prescriptive - Scrum is a good example. If you ...
- 1,046
1
vote
How to estimate and plan with a distributed, part-time team?
Organizational buy-in
I agree with what @barnaby has suggested. Option 3 is the preferable solution here, however it will only work if there is buy-in at an organisational level. There are a couple ...
- 73
1
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team building activities for remote team
random slack channel or something like that always works.
it takes time for people to get drawn in but it's the best way for people to get to know each other.
we share news, memes, discuss random ...
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