Rackspace Email & Apps Blog

“Don’t forget to grab your jacket.” The words rang through the office as they rolled off my tongue. I slid my left arm in my jacket while pushing open the door with my right. I wait until the group forms what resembles a circle and we start. If you’re thinking that this sounds like some ritual, you are correct. I am outside with one of our development teams and we are participating in what is called a daily standup.

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.

This is where it all begins. Sprint planning is where the team gathers to plan the next sprint’s worth of work. What is a sprint? A sprint is a fixed time period to complete defined tasks. The sprint planning meeting is where a team selects and commits to work for the next sprint.

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.

Scrum, what is that? Sounds like something that sits on the surface of a pond, doesn’t it? Those were my first thoughts after hearing the word a couple years ago. Scrum is actually an agile project management methodology. We use it at Rackspace Email & Apps because things around here change very fast and we need to put processes in place that allow us to keep pace.

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.