Team agreements recently came up at a conference. I picked them up from another coach as a means to help set-up a baseline of expectations that the team can have of each other. They don't take much time to set-up (almost fun) but pay dividends back to the team throughout the project. We start each Scrum Master certification training with a working agreement of what makes a great class.
[2/27/17] I updated the list with some new items that pertain more to technical practices (per XP, DevOps and covered in the Certified Scrum Developer workshop).
Here's an example of a Team Agreements list:
1. Tell the truth and be transparent
2. Treat all team members with respect and value other team member’s time.
3. Value team members’ thoughts
4. When in the team room, cell phones on low tone and take calls outside of the room. During meetings, cell phones set to silent.
5. Formal meetings have an agenda, have focused participation and begin/end on time (unless all agree to change it).
6. Have one conversation at a time including during phone conferences.
7. ScrumMaster will maintain a calendar in an Excel spreadsheet that will include planned leave and holidays. This will be reviewed and confirmed at start of sprint planning.
8. Be present during specified co-location days from Monday through Friday, 1:30 pm to 10:30 pm, except for travel. Remote team members can work 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM on Fridays.
9. Be available by cell phone when needed.
10. Daily stand-up meeting 2:15 - 2:30 PM
11. Daily Scrum of Scrums call with US from 9:45 – 10:00 PM (9:15 PST)
12. Task estimated hours to completion to be updated in Rally/VersionOne/JIRA/TFS daily by 6 PM
13. Dinner hour is free time
14. All new code (or code touched) must have unit tests.
15. At least one story per sprint must have the acceptance tests automated.
16. One team member must learn something new (take a story they don't know) per sprint.
17. Limit the number of stories in progress to the number of team members (keeps QA from getting overloaded). Often referred to as a WIP limit.
18. We must have a team name. And the team name changes if management changes the team.
19. Developers must check-in their code [every 2 hours, or 4 hours, or daily].
20. If a developer broke the build, they must undue their change if they can't fix it within 10 minutes.
21. We must pair on at least one story per sprint. A similar agreement is "We must have at least one mob programming session per sprint."
22. Leave the code cleaner than you found it (relentless refactoring).
23. At least [x] items from the retrospective must be worked on the next sprint (typically between 1 - 3).
24. At Daily Scrum, only the person with the talking stick/ball/rat can talk.
25. If anyone is late to the Daily Scrum they: put a dollar in the beer/cake/donuts jars, or have to sing and be recorded and uploaded to YouTube (true), tell a joke. Or, one team reversed it - if everyone was on time, the team got cake/pizza/new car. :-)
26. HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF FUN!
Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, communication, management, teams, projects
[2/27/17] I updated the list with some new items that pertain more to technical practices (per XP, DevOps and covered in the Certified Scrum Developer workshop).
Here's an example of a Team Agreements list:
1. Tell the truth and be transparent
2. Treat all team members with respect and value other team member’s time.
3. Value team members’ thoughts
4. When in the team room, cell phones on low tone and take calls outside of the room. During meetings, cell phones set to silent.
5. Formal meetings have an agenda, have focused participation and begin/end on time (unless all agree to change it).
6. Have one conversation at a time including during phone conferences.
7. ScrumMaster will maintain a calendar in an Excel spreadsheet that will include planned leave and holidays. This will be reviewed and confirmed at start of sprint planning.
8. Be present during specified co-location days from Monday through Friday, 1:30 pm to 10:30 pm, except for travel. Remote team members can work 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM on Fridays.
9. Be available by cell phone when needed.
10. Daily stand-up meeting 2:15 - 2:30 PM
11. Daily Scrum of Scrums call with US from 9:45 – 10:00 PM (9:15 PST)
12. Task estimated hours to completion to be updated in Rally/VersionOne/JIRA/TFS daily by 6 PM
13. Dinner hour is free time
14. All new code (or code touched) must have unit tests.
15. At least one story per sprint must have the acceptance tests automated.
16. One team member must learn something new (take a story they don't know) per sprint.
17. Limit the number of stories in progress to the number of team members (keeps QA from getting overloaded). Often referred to as a WIP limit.
18. We must have a team name. And the team name changes if management changes the team.
19. Developers must check-in their code [every 2 hours, or 4 hours, or daily].
20. If a developer broke the build, they must undue their change if they can't fix it within 10 minutes.
21. We must pair on at least one story per sprint. A similar agreement is "We must have at least one mob programming session per sprint."
22. Leave the code cleaner than you found it (relentless refactoring).
23. At least [x] items from the retrospective must be worked on the next sprint (typically between 1 - 3).
24. At Daily Scrum, only the person with the talking stick/ball/rat can talk.
25. If anyone is late to the Daily Scrum they: put a dollar in the beer/cake/donuts jars, or have to sing and be recorded and uploaded to YouTube (true), tell a joke. Or, one team reversed it - if everyone was on time, the team got cake/pizza/new car. :-)
26. HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF FUN!
Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, communication, management, teams, projects
