Traveling Scrum Team
Happy Friday everyone! I wanted to brainstorm a bit and ask your opinion / experience involving the following scenario. Most members of the scrum team travel from various locations across North America and thus our daily scrum schedule looks like this:
Daily Scrum Start Time:
Mon - 4PM (Consultants travel to office Monday AM)
Tues - 10AM
Wed - 10AM
Thurs - 10AM (Consultants travel home Thursday PM)
Fri - 10AM* (we use video conferencing but a newly joined team member is in California so this is 7AM so we may have to adjust this accordingly)
Do you think we should move our daily scrum to a time that fits the same window every day of the week? Curious as to what has worked best for others.
Are the team struggling to find a consistent time in which they can collaborate for 15 minutes? If so, how effectively are they able to collaborate throughout the rest of the working day?
There is inherent benefit to consistency. This contributes to the "heartbeat" of a sprint.
I would second Ian's inquiries regarding the team's ability to collaborate.
Personally, I don't see a big problem with the current schedule you have. If you have people traveling Monday AM where the travel times can vary drastically depending on the consultant's location; then a morning Scrum is virtually impossible. 4 of the 5 days are at the same time, having Monday's the oddball at 4 PM is not such a drastic change that it creates problems. If you had the Scrum at a different time everyday, that would create chaos but this schedule is pretty consistent. When you have traveling consultants, that puts a lot of restrictions on planning for events. As you pointed out, Monday AM and Thursday PM are traveling times so it will be quite a challenge to find a time where every person is available every day of the week.
This schedule is not consistent enough, and from personal experience will lead to confusion. Work with the team to identify when everyone can meet at the same time, every single day.