The scrum of scrums is a meeting format you can use to co-ordinate multiple teams regularly. The official recommendation from Ken Schwaber (it’s creator) is that scrum of scrums meetings are held daily after the daily scrum meeting. However, I have found (and it is widely agreed) that these meetings can be varied to meet the demands of your project. My recommendations are based on the timescales of the project, sprint length and the likelihood of impediments arising often, as follows:
Daily – Where the related teams are doing highly complex work within one to two week sprints or with large numbers of unknowns and solutions may need to be adapted quickly. E.g., I found this working on a proof of concept project with a team of video streaming experts as our dependencies for my IOS application. We were all learning about each other’s impediments daily.
Weekly – Where the main purpose is a progress update and usually for making sure that a well-defined low complexity piece or pieces of work is on track. This works in two week (or longer) sprints and may work in one week sprints.
(NOTE: Want a proven plan for truly effortless scrum mastery so you can facilitate teams to deliver projects on time confidently with your existing team—even if you’ve tried lots of stuff already? Check out Pashun Consulting’s Scrum Master Certification guide and become a specialist! Learn more now.)
Two or three times a week (e.g. Monday Wednesday and Friday) – For related projects in sprints of two weeks or more where the features involve medium to high technical complexity, but not enough changes from day to day to warrant a daily meeting.
I found that it is important to choose the right frequency because holding the meeting too infrequently means that there are not enough chances to adapt and problem solve. However holding the meeting too frequently can be a bad use of the invitees’ time and leave people feeling frustrated. Feel free to see my chapter on this and pick wisely. A good decision will leave everyone feeling that the scvrum of scrums meeting is an excellent form of coordination amongst teams.
(NOTE: Want a proven plan for truly effortless scrum mastery so you can facilitate teams to deliver projects on time confidently with your existing team—even if you’ve tried lots of stuff already? Check out Pashun Consulting’s Scrum Master Certification guide and become a specialist! Learn more now.)
