Often when we first introduce people to Scrum, they respond that there are too many meetings. We think it helps to think of the Scrum meetings as work rather than meetings. Before Scrum most people are used to working on their own. In Scrum we strive to collaborate more, as a result we need more working sessions with everyone participating. These are the Scrum meetings.
Something that helps to make sessions more like work and less like meetings is to have many of them in your team area. Sprint Planning, Reviews and Daily Scrums can all happen around your desks and don’t need a separate meeting room. Another thing that helps is ensuring that everyone knows what the purpose of the meeting is, having the right input to start the meeting, and getting a tangible outcome at the end.
To help with this we developed some Scrum Meeting cards that we use on Certified Scrum Master (CSM) training. Initially the cards were developed to help people with the simulated meetings in the course, but so many people asked for copies to take back to their office with them, that we have re-purposed the cards as a quick reference guide for the Scrum meetings. Download the cards below, print on A5, and take them along to meetings as a reminder of what to focus on.
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