Here is what it looked like:

But now I simply create a group from my Contacts list and invite the group to the get together.

And it looks like this:

Saving me time and creating a much more efficient way to get my work done.

When scheduling a meeting, it is, of course, important to find a time when everyone can meet. Microsoft Exchange customers are already familiar with using Outlook to schedule a meeting based on others’ schedules. But, did you know that Rackspace Email customers can use Outlook to do that, too?

With Sync for Outlook, I can easily sync my co-workers’ 65+ calendars, adding them to my Outlook. And because I use Automatic Sync, I don’t even need to push a button—it automatically syncs the data in the background, so I can go on with my work. Since my Outlook calendar data is kept up-to-date, I’m always ready whenever I need to schedule a meeting that will work for everyone.

Ever happened to you? Ever sent an email and forgot to include a team member? Or, send a message and leave out a key piece of information? How about sending a meeting invitation with the same details missing? Worse yet, after hitting send, realizing that you’ve sent that invitation to the wrong group of people? If you’ve done these things you are not alone.  I am with you.

Being a technical project manager at Rackspace, I am constantly looking for ways to improve everyday things. If I can fix the small things that annoy and frustrate me, I can get back a few minutes each day and spend that time on what matters most. For example, the act of not attaching a file wastes a lot of time. For example, let’s say I send an email without an attachment on Monday morning. Monday afternoon I get a reply saying I left off the attachment. I then resend the attachment. My recipient gets it later that afternoon or evening. So instead of getting the email and reading the attachment mid-day Monday and dealing with it, we are now dealing with it on Tuesday. Imagine if I sent that email without the attachment the day before my month long vacation.

The bottom line is that it wastes time.  In a fast-paced environment, this creates a bottleneck.

To avoid that bottleneck, I devised a quick solution. It is as simple as delay sending. When I hit send, the email sits in the outbox for a preset amount of time before actually taking off. This short period of time helped me catch countless mistakes and leads to a better experience for those who receive my emails.

Here’s how to set up delay sending in Outlook 2007:

1. Select Tools > Rules and Alerts
2. Select New Rule
3. Select “Check messages after sending” > Next
4. Check “on this machine only” > Next
5. Check “defer delivery by a number of minutes” and Select “a number of” and set your delay (mine is set at 3 minutes) > Next
6. Finish

A daily standup is a quick meeting where the team gathers to discuss a few simple items and is a part of Scrum. We discuss things like what is being worked on, what will be worked on and if there is anything keeping them from getting their best work done. To be clear, this is not a status report meeting; it is a meeting where the team can gather to discuss what is going on. As a project manager in this environment, it is simply my job to facilitate the meeting and take note of anything that is not helping the team get their best work done.

What I’ve seen in these meetings are team members starting to work on something new and another team member jumping in to help them. As far as things slowing the team down, I’ve seen things from too many meetings, to slow computers, to external dependencies. The main goal is for the team to report to themselves and hold themselves accountable for the work they are performing.

A question I have been asked is, do you really meet daily? The answer is a simple yes. If I am in another sprint planning meeting, the team holds the standup without me and notes any roadblocks they may be facing. Another question you may be asking yourself: does everyone meet outside? No, not all teams meet outside; this is just something one of the teams I work with decided to try. Is a jacket necessary? I’d recommend one. But you’re on your own if you decide to wear flip-flops to work that day (yes, this has happened). Lucky for the teams, these meetings are capped at 15 minutes. They’re usually quicker, especially if the temperature is down in the teens. All in all, these meetings are helpful and are a great way to get the team involved in all aspects of their projects.

What does sprint planning look like at Rackspace? It depends on the team and how the team plans. Guidelines exist on how sprint planning meetings should flow; however, there is room for teams to adapt the process to their workflow.

Of the scrum meetings, sprint planning is arguably the most important. This is where the stakeholders gather to discuss the importance of upcoming features and changes within a product line. We discuss the overall plan and dive into individual features, discussing both business and technical details. As you can imagine, this looks very different for our technical writing team than it does for the team that brings you Rackspace Email, and even more different for teams charged with ensuring spam and viruses stay out of your inbox.

Each team has its own set of tools.  Some teams use spreadsheets, we’ve tried enterprise software, open source tools, and some teams even use index cards taped to the wall. Depending on team size and topic, these meetings last from a few to eight hours. In the last meeting, the team walked in to the sounds of John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane,” doughnuts, and juice. After settling in, we spent over three hours hashing out what the team would be working on for the next 20 days.

After lunch, we reconvened and finished discussing each feature and the team decided what it wanted to work on. Team ownership is encouraged within scrum and sprint planning. Finally, the team discusses any external dependencies, the meeting ends, and I am off to make sure this plan is documented and communicated to interested parties. Tomorrow, the sprint begins.

Although we’re a growing company, overall we’re still very horizontal. How horizontal? Well, I can walk up to anyone of the founders and talk to them about anything I’d like – no chain of command, no vertical hierarchy. And, project managers aren’t molded by the command and control structure so prevalent in the corporate world. Instead, project managers are facilitators and coaches making sure the processes put in place are lightweight and stripped of waste. This is where Scrum comes in. The lightweight methodology of Scrum fits right in with Rackspace culture.

Scrum allows us to turn things around quickly. We can look at what is important now and get those things done. We don’t wait years between software releases.  We aim to release early and often. Watching our teams embrace this new way of working has been exciting and the challenges that have arisen further energize us to find new solutions. Some of the challenges include: limited resources and working with non-development teams like design and writing.

Here, we don’t have tomes of documentation lying around. We have conversations. We don’t mandate that everyone use a particular tool for tracking their workflow, we let the teams decide what works best for them. We don’t tell others how to do something, we open up the conversation and trust others to create the environment in which they can do their best work. Within this philosophy we weave Scrum and Scrum-inspired processes. From sprint planning meetings, to daily stand-ups, to retrospectives; we’re finding ways to make it all work. So much so that we currently have 17 teams using Scrum methods. And, as we move forward, we’ll share some of our experiences with you and feel free to share your Scrum experiences and questions with us right here.