Implementing SCRUM in a .. .student organisation (AIESEC)
Perhaps some of you heard about AIESEC.
In short: We are managing cross-cultural exchanges. Our teams are cross-functional and focus on sales, interviews, facilitating events, marketing, value delivery items, etc. A lot of stuff.
As a VP, I'd like to implement SCRUM, but I wonder if it's even possible since it's a youth-run organisation. People often work from home, and we have meetings like once a week. And since it's a volunteering job, one day people spend 2 hours, and the next 2 day they are focused on university. So for example, I don't see how Daily SCRUMS would be even possible. Should I replace it, or just skip? Also, I would have to be both product owner and scrum-master.
In short.
Problem 1. How do I reconcile being product owner and scrum master at the same time.
Problem 2. I cant meet with everyone engaged once a week, or even two. I can meet with team leaders, though. Yes, we have team leaders. How to work with this? They can "represent" development team but still, they can't really assess how much work their teams can put into each sprint.
Problem 3. Development teams would have problems to perform daily scrum. Moreover, 105 mins a week is a lot for it, since ~average team member puts around 4h of their personal time a week into organisation.
Although I think that implementing SCRUM in it's pure form is impossible, and according to the Scrum Guide it won't be SCRUM anymore, I'm just looking for ideas to implement as many parts of SCRUM as possible in an effective way. Any ideas?
Pure theory:
1. Establish a shared chat space so that you daily synchronization could always happen, out-of-real time, in this virtual space, being simultaneously highly visible and transparent.
2. Do organize "sprint plannings" and "sprint reviews" that happen periodically and give you a chance to look together at some finished body of work.
3. Engage everyone, not just TLs.
But yes, this will not be Scrum. It might be agile, though!
As a VP, I'd like to implement SCRUM
Why? What risks do you think can be better managed by doing so, or what other benefits do you think might be gained?
Are you facing a complex environment, and if so, do you have reason to believe that planning and achieving Sprint Goals may help?
I agree with Ian. While Scrum is an awesome framework, you have to make sure it will work for you and your team. Based off the info you gave, it seems you can benefit from using bits and pieces of scrum to help your organization but you won't be able to adopt scrum in full. That's not a bad thing, it doesn't mean you should not do any of it, it just means you won't be doing Scrum.
Problem 1. How do I reconcile being product owner and scrum master at the same time.
While this is a challenge, it's not impossible. Perform the functions of each role and you've got it down.
Problem 2. I cant meet with everyone engaged once a week, or even two. I can meet with team leaders, though. Yes, we have team leaders. How to work with this? They can "represent" development team but still, they can't really assess how much work their teams can put into each sprint
Team leaders are not a part of a dev team in Scrum. This is potentially your biggest blocker for adopting scrum.
Problem 3. Development teams would have problems to perform daily scrum. Moreover, 105 mins a week is a lot for it, since ~average team member puts around 4h of their personal time a week into organisation..
It is not mandatory to spend 15 minutes in every scrum. The 15 minutes is just the time box set for it, in other words; it must not exceed 15 minutes. Depending on the size of your team, 15 minutes may be far too long and can be shortened to 7-8 minutes instead.
You don't mention any other problems that you will come across within the framework, just Daily Scrums. Would you be able to do the Sprint Planning, Review, and Retrospective given the status of your team? If you can do everything within the framework of Scrum except the Daily Scrum, you can easily find virtual tools to facilitate the Daily Scrum. The point of the Daily Scrum is not to just have a meeting for 15 minutes, it is so that the team is on the same page about what is being worked on individually and as a team. Many teams using scrum are located in various time zones so meeting together is a challenge and sometimes impossible to coordinate. Those teams use virtual tools instead, there are apps available for this or you can simply use E-mail.