Scrum Team / Meetings (Way of Work)
Dear Community,
I recently joined a new project and team as Scrum Master. This is a special case for me as I've always had conventional teams working independently. This new team is more or less a value stream team. Members of my team are Data Engineers, Data Scientist and Data Analysts who work for other teams within the ART (Agile Release Train). My challenge now is to put in place the following:
1. Ways of Work
2. What kind of meetings are to be considered in this case and why?
Tip: The task they work on are in the backlog of the other teams and not my team
Thanks for your contributions.
Tip: The task they work on are in the backlog of the other teams and not my team
Whatever's going on there doesn't sound like a tip. It sounds more like a structural impediment.
The Scrum Guide says: "The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product. It is the single source of work undertaken by the Scrum Team."
If you've indeed been hired as a Scrum Master, you are accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Perhaps better transparency is needed over the work being done, and who might be accountable for it.
Not sure if you mean your team essentially work in other teams or if they operate on the program, solution or portfolio level of a SAFe organisation, as you mentioned ART.
If the later, have a look online for "scaled agile meetings". Say on the Program level, there are the following meetings:
- PI planning, similar concept of sprint planning, but on programme level
- Scrum of scrums
- PO Sync, similar concept as backlog refinement
- Inspect and adapt Workshop, like a retro, but over the program
@Ian Mitchell, Thanks very much. It's my first time to confront such a situation and the situation seems complex. My first proposal will be for the teams concerned to assign the tasks to my team so that it appears in my team's backlog and my PO will then take over from there. That way we can have regular meetings just within the team. But again, the POs of the teams are the ones with the vision of their product and may require my team members to attend their meeting; Dailies, Refinement, Planning, Review, etc as it is the case presently.
@Pierre Pienaar, Yes my team members work about 80% in other teams and we're in a SAFe environment. The issue here is that they attend meetings with the other teams because of their responsibilities with those teams. Having the meetings as specified by SAFe isn't possible.
If your organization is using SAFe, then you are not using Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. You are using a version of Scrum that was created specific for SAFe that they call SAFe Scrum. It was created and tailored specific to fit within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). There a common terms between SAFe Scrum and Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide, but they do not necessarily mean the same thing. I suggest that you find a forum specifically for SAFe and SAFe Scrum if you can find one and ask this question there. Those participants will be better suited to help you with your dilemma.
Some of the participants in this forum have worked in or studied SAFe but you will mostly get answers related to Scrum as described in the Scrum Guide.
There is a good article and discussion at scrum.org regarding differences between SAFe Scrum and professional Scrum(Scrum guide Scrum),
Also a youtube video with a discussion