Practical issue: Scrum Master "owns" all meetings in outlook
Hey all,
I'm having a very practical impediment for which I'm hoping to gain some insights from the community.
I have some ideas myself, but was wondering if I'm missing a better solution.
As a Scrum Master with 2 teams, I plan (almost) all scrum events for the team in Microsoft Outlook.
A lot of them are recurring events and are set in the calendar long beforehand.
Every once in a while some things need to be rescheduled and then I'm the only one who can do it. Which is a bit of a bottleneck/blocker for self-managing.
So I'm looking for a practical solution that the meetings in Microsoft Outlook can be "managed as a team".
Thanks!
Why doesn't each team have an account for this purpose?
Outlook has a setting that will allow others to update the event. You can even create Team Calendars and have them set to allow anyone on the team to manage them.
Look into those as options.
There are a few things that I'd do here.
First, look into Daniel's suggestion. I'd recommend a team calendar (or, if you're using a form of scaled Scrum for a product, a product calendar) where everyone has permissions to create, edit, and delete events. Outlook does have this functionality, although you may need an administrator to create the calendar and set up the initial permissions.
With the team calendar, though, I'd also look at who "owns" each event. The Daily Scrum is an event by and for the Developers, so let a Developer (or all of the Developers) choose the time and put this event on the calendar. I see the Sprint Planning and Sprint Review as led by the Product Owner, so the Product Owner can put these on the calendar. The Sprint Retrospective, since it's focused on continuous improvement, the Scrum Master's event. The team can collaborate on scheduling, but there can be a primary person accountable and responsible for ensuring that each event is scheduled, notifications are set up, and the right people are invited.
Finally, I'd dig into why you have to move events. I can see it happening sometimes, but if it's frequently happening, then perhaps the scheduling of the events is something that can be improved. I've found that consistency is extremely valuable.