Scrum Event Manifesto

Through hours of endless toil, we continue to hope for better ways of collaborating in Scrum events by practicing it and aiding others in doing so.

Through this endeavor, we have come to appreciate:

Chat messages over emails, over video recordings, over boring online meetings.

Minimum viable documentation over #nodocumentation, over comprehensive documentation, over meeting minutes that list all participants and their questionable contributions.

A 30-minute meeting over a 60-minute meeting with breaks, over a 120-minute ordeal, over a 2-day online PI planning.

Miro.com over smoke signals, over pulling all your wisdom teeth, over Jira.

In other words, although there may or may not be some value in the items on the left, we are absolutely certain that there is none on the right.

Signatories: A laughing picture, an alien, some guy, Kermit, Baby Yoda with glasses, A coffee mug, Deadpool, I’m Ironman, Not a cat. Fun fact: All of them would rather be at a ski resort than in the zoom meeting.

11 Principles for Scrum Events

The Scrum master hath no leave to share their screen — we are serious here.

The PO hath no leave to sayeth developer names or call them directly.

Whatev’r screen is being shared, it shall not be Jira or Azure DevOps. Only tools which alloweth all participants to collaborate and writeth simultaneously are ok — so in most cases it should not be necessary for someone to share at all.

No one hath leave to talk for more than two minutes straight, no meeting over 60 minutes without breaks (or simply no meeting over 60 minutes).

When someone is meandering, all others hath leave to mute that person and the group moves on.

Estimating stuff (arbitrarily shouting made-up numbers) hath no leave to take more than 5% of any meeting — listening to this is fun only for the first time — 13!

Discussions about how the perfect architecture should look like may be held only while planking between 22 pm and 23 pm and don’t count as working time.

Whence the topic in the agenda you provided in the invitation (!) is over, everyone leaves, no ‘now that we are all here and still have some minutes’ nonsense, the event participants are not your hostages.

Meetings with more than 8 participants are not meetings, but video recordings.

Answering ‘Conditional’ in MS Outlook is not allowed, nor adding a bazillion ‘Optional’ participants or joining later than 5 minutes from the start of a meeting. You are either there, or not — even when you are important.

When someone says ‘Alignment‘, ‘Commitment‘, ‘Focus‘, or mentions the Scrum Guide, the event instantly ends and this participant is banned from all further attendance.

Disclaimer: Yes, those are not principles. Yes, there are instances, where Jira might prove to be the right tool (I’ve yet to see them — but who knows, there are even aliens now), where a Scrum Master should share their screen, call a name, where you need to estimate longer, or you need optional Outlook participants. Please don’t take this too serious — it is not meant to be — and use some time to improve your meeting culture. The disclaimer would not be in place without the insights of Sjoerd Nijland — thank you for pointing out, that some really might take this article as hard criticism!