We've run into a situation where some team members feel that there are too many

managers attending the daily scrum, and because of that they feel very

uncomfortable giving their status. A typical team will have five or six members

and sometimes we'll have four or five managers attend the scrum (they are not

allowed to speak). Some managers have their arguments as to why they feel they

need to be there, arguments that I totally disagree with. So I'm curious as to

what a daily scrum looks like at other companies. Other than product owner,

scrum master, and team members, who else shows up to your daily scrum?



Thanks,

Jason

We've run into a situation where some team members feel that there are too many managers attending the daily scrum, and because of that they feel very uncomfortable giving their status. A typical team will have five or six members and sometimes we'll have four or five managers attend the scrum (they are not allowed to speak). Some managers have their arguments as to why they feel they need to be there, arguments that I totally disagree with. So I'm curious as to what a daily scrum looks like at other companies. Other than product owner, scrum master, and team members, who else shows up to your daily scrum?

Thanks,
Jason

-- Peter Stevens, CSM, CSP
http://tinyurl.com/Scrum-In-House-Training
http://scrum-breakfast.com
tel: +41 44 586 6450

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Peter Stevens (calendar)

<peterstev@...> wrote:

> Hi Jason,

>

> How much ham do you put in your omeletts? When does it stop being an omelett

> iand become just fried ham? Oops, got that backwards. There's gotta be a

> good joke in there somewhre ;-)

>



I was going to say it depends on what part of the chicken you are

eating. If you are only eating the wings you are going to want more

chickens to contribute. However, that breaks the whole silly metaphor.

You Scrum guys don't eat chicken, you only eat developers... err Pigs.

Hello, Roy.  On Thursday, March 12, 2009, at 2:14:56 PM, you wrote:



> Maybe a little subterfuge is neccesary. Pretend to have the daily

> Scrum and make it fast and efficient ... 15 minutes max. Then go

> somewhere else and have a real one, sans managers :) Maybe have

> yesterday's Daily Scrum this morning, but don't tell the managers.



I've probably done such things, but in the end, the relationship

between team and management cannot prosper unless we work toward

transparency. This would be a step away from transparency in my

opinion, and as such a very bad precedent.



Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

www.xprogramming.com/blog

Attend our CSM Plus Course!

http://hendricksonxp.com/index.php?option=com_eventlist&Itemid=28

If there's only one answer, then this must not be a very interesting topic.

Hello, Roy.  On Friday, March 13, 2009, at 7:32:23 AM, you wrote:



> I agree entirely, Ron, and my suggestion was not totally serious

> ... but unfortunately there are some managers who just cannot

> control themselves, and it is virtually impossible to be

> transparent with them. Any admission of a problem or a mistake

> made, or similar admission, is just what such a manager is looking

> for to allow him (or her) to assert their power and authority.

> Subterfuge is sometimes a survival tactic.



It can be. I find survival tactics to be a poor refuge, but in tough

times what can anyone do? And some people aren't as crazy as I am.



What I choose to believe -- despite its obvious untruth -- is that

by being transparent with such a manager, and jawboning him

mercilessly, I can bring him around to letting the team do their

job. I base that on the fact that I've been successful in doing it

so often. One reason why I've been successful is that my work has

been good ... and it is usually obvious to my management that I

value the work more than I do the job, so that the usual threat

avenues just don't work on me.



Most people, again, aren't that crazy, so they are more likely to

drop into survival mode.



I think that's tragic, and I cannot recommend it, though I can

understand it.



Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

www.xprogramming.com/blog

Attend our CSM Plus Course!

http://hendricksonxp.com/index.php?option=com_eventlist&Itemid=28

If you're not throwing some gravel once in a while,

you're not using the whole road.

> Other than product owner, scrum master, and team members, who else shows up to

> your daily scrum?

Other than the ones you mention, sometimes managers from one or two levels up.



I have to say though, I'm more interested in *your* situation:)



What are the reasons the managers want to be there? At least they're

behaving:) (Or does this cause problems afterward?) And who are these

managers - matrixed managers for the team members, managers of the end

user, managers up the chain, etc.?



When you say "arguments that I totally disagree with" are you

disagreeing with what they want, or that attending the standup is a

way to get it?



And why is the team uncomfortable? Is there a gap in transparency?



Regards,

   Bill Wake

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 9:59 AM, SJPlante <jasonplante@...> wrote:

> We've run into a situation where some team members feel that there are too

> many managers attending the daily scrum, and because of that they feel very

> uncomfortable giving their status. A typical team will have five or six

> members and sometimes we'll have four or five managers attend the scrum

> (they are not allowed to speak). Some managers have their arguments as to

> why they feel they need to be there, arguments that I totally disagree with.

> So I'm curious as to what a daily scrum looks like at other companies. Other

> than product owner, scrum master, and team members, who else shows up to

> your daily scrum?

>

> Thanks,

> Jason

>

>







--

    Bill Wake  William.Wake@...  www.xp123.com

I suppose that being honest to all is the best solution. If team is feeling

uncomfortable, productivity will go down, and I guess that non-agile managers

would understand this language. I would make one meeting  for managers, PO and

would frankly say: "Developers are feeling uncomfortable with such a big number

of chickens on daily scrum. They feel being micromanaged and this ruins agile

spirit and agile benefits. This will harm the project." Then I would suggest

daily "chicken" meeting (have nothing with Scrum), where PO (or even I as SM)

would tell them about status. And of course, I would invite them to Scrum Demo

meetings, where they could stay in touch with developers.



I hope this helps.



--- In scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com, "SJPlante" <jasonplante@...> wrote:

>

> We've run into a situation where some team members feel that there are too

many managers attending the daily scrum, and because of that they feel very

uncomfortable giving their status. A typical team will have five or six members

and sometimes we'll have four or five managers attend the scrum (they are not

allowed to speak). Some managers have their arguments as to why they feel they

need to be there, arguments that I totally disagree with. So I'm curious as to

what a daily scrum looks like at other companies. Other than product owner,

scrum master, and team members, who else shows up to your daily scrum?

>

> Thanks,

> Jason

>

In the CSM course, we train that the daily scrum is a planning meeting for the team.  Chickens attend by invitation only.  I had a director show up at a scrum and actually identified himself as a "chicken" and asked if he could attend.  I, the ScrumMaster, looked around at team members and I could sense that there was some tension and surprise by this unforeseen event.  So, I politely responded to the director that the scrum was for the team only and he was welcome to come in after it concluded if he wanted.  He left and waited outside the team room.  I invited him in after the scrum and he said that he had heard very good things about their work from the business side and wanted to relay that in person.  He then left. 

One of the team members asked if it was appropriate to ask a director to leave the scrum.  I looked around the team and asked what they thought.  A couple of them said his arrival had caught them by surprise and they were suspicious of what was behind it (perhaps an "experiential thing"??)  Then the discussion turned to transparency when a couple of people suggested that if the team were to be truly transparent, it shouldn't matter if a chicken was in the room as long as the chicken understood the rules and didn't interfere or try to control.  I asked the team as a whole if they thought his presence might change the environment of trust and cause them to withhold or change information.  All agreed that it shouldn't, but they couldn't say it wouldn't.  With that, I suggested that the environment of trust is critical to being transparent, so there seems to be a deeper issue.  They acknowledged that.  But, that wasn't the time or place to deal with a deeply embedded cultural issue.

The team did admit that his immediate compliance with my request to leave left them feeling a bit conflicted - suspicious initially on one hand and yet confounded that he immediately left without objection and rather humbly.  Interestingly, it never happened again but it caused a bit of wonderment among the team about the whole episode.  No easy answer as to whether it was handled appropriately, but the results were intriguing. 

Tom Mellor
Certified Scrum Trainer
 

Wow, what an intriguing discussion.  I liked the comment earlier regarding only

getting one perspective.  So, I thought I'd add mine, from the chicken's

perspective.  Actually I think the metaphor is crap because my stake (as a

supposed chicken) is pretty high too.



The ratio of managers to team members can range from 1:2 to 1:5 in the team

standups we have here.  We (the team members) actively encourage managers to

come along to our morning standups.  They love the fact that their lives (at

work) are taken an interest in by the people that "manage" them.



You'd be surprised how much a CEO/MD actually has a stake in your project. 

Especially if the money for the project is coming directly from his/her pocket. 

Kind of makes the chicken/pig analogy mute.



I think when you don't want to have management there you have issues you should

deal with internally.  You may not of course, but my experience suggests that in

teams like that you do.



Lack of transparency.  You're saying things that you don't want managers to hear

(rightly or wrongly).  That's because by the time it's got to management it's

been "adjusted" for their ears.  We want our managers to know what's going on,

we want them to understand the intricacies, wins and losses.  We want them to

know based on reality not heresay.  As a manager, I want to know too. 

Transparency should be encouraged and any mechanism put in place to stifle it is

causing your organisation problems.



Intimidation.  Notice this one all the time.  Lots of people are intimidated in

direct proportion to the level of the manager.  It's silly, not needed and

unhelpful.  But ... it's human. If you have a manager that likes intimidating

then talk to him/her about it.  Work never gets done better by intimidation.  If

engineers are intimidated by managers, sit down and talk with them, find out why

and look to solving it.



Road Blocks.  It's amazing how much easier it is for a manager to get rid of

road blocks when an engineer/developer might spend considerable time grumbling

and running into brick walls.  If "road block" identification is part of your

standup (and it should be) then having managers there is really useful.



There's probably others but they're the obvious ones to me that I've seen over

time.  Managers are people too, have as many foibles and nuances as everyone

else.  For the most part they want to help and ensure projects work well too. 

Don't exclude them from your projects, they can be very useful allies.



Oh, forgot this one.  Crap Managers.  That one is much, much harder to deal with

:-).  Yep, might mean a quite coffee discussion between a senior member (or the

most diplomatic one) with the manager to determine his/her motivations for

attending.



Luke



--- In scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com, "Whitten, Richard"

<richard.whitten@...> wrote:

>

> I have banned all managers from my daily Scrum meetings - for the reason

> you outlined below.

>

>

>

> Rich

>

>

>

> From: scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com

> [mailto:scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of SJPlante

> Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 7:00 AM

> To: scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com

> Subject: [scrumdevelopment] How many chickens is too many?

>

>

>

> We've run into a situation where some team members feel that there are

> too many managers attending the daily scrum, and because of that they

> feel very uncomfortable giving their status. A typical team will have

> five or six members and sometimes we'll have four or five managers

> attend the scrum (they are not allowed to speak). Some managers have

> their arguments as to why they feel they need to be there, arguments

> that I totally disagree with. So I'm curious as to what a daily scrum

> looks like at other companies. Other than product owner, scrum master,

> and team members, who else shows up to your daily scrum?

>

> Thanks,

> Jason

>

I coach all my teams towards transparency. Having managers or infact anyone else

attend the daily scrum as observers is (IMHO) a good thing and if a problem

arises as a result of doing it - address that issue (it may be that the manager

tries to butt in - that indicates they need some level of coaching to understand

why that is not appropriate).



Enforcing the rules of Scrum makes no sense if you defend the team so much that

no one has the opportunity to challenge those rules.



my bit for the night.

mike.sutton

csm.csp.cspo.certified.certifiable.