“Why Scrum?” event at the SAQ

Yesterday, Dani Tobler, Gregor Stöckli and I were invited to come to monthly meeting of the Swiss Association for Quality to talk about Scrum.

Usually in a situation like this, there would be one or two people would give a talk with more or less interesting Powerpoint slides. We tried something different. We treated the evening a Scrum Mini Project. We collected requriements (questions) from the audience. A Product Owner prioritized the questions. While the team thought about how to answer the questions, I gave a short talk about how Scrum works. Then the team answered the questions. Then a review of what we’d accomplished (and a retrospective as a feedback form). And finally a
traditional round of Q & A.

Especially considering it was the first time, it went very well. The presentation was only 15 minutes or so, everything else was interactive, which the participants really appreciated. The start was a little bumpy, with a brief dead zone as the team & P-O were discussing what to do. But after that, things started rolling and people really appreciated the ‘live demo’ and the spontaneity of the discussions. And brownies are always a good idea, especially after 6pm, when people are starting to get hungry.

I have posted the slides online. In particular, the links to the community, and the books and the sources of training are visible in the PDF (which they weren’t in the screen presentation).

P.S. If anyone has some pictures, I would love to post one here!