Please don’t waste our time
Posted on August 12th, 2009 in general | No Comments »
I am sure I have my annoying ways of working but there is one thing that drives me nuts about some of the teams I’ve worked with.
Showing up to a meeting late.
The thing I like about scrum is even though we meet daily, we end up with fewer planned meetings (lots of ad-hoc white board sessions but they are very focused and productive). The thing I don’t like about scrum is having to wait for 5 or 10 minutes for the team to assemble. Sure there are things you can try and do to stop this behavior. I hate the idea of a ‘late jar’ where you contribute $1/minute you are late (donated to charity or food for the sprint review, etc) because if you agreed to attend a meeting at a certain time, then get there on time. On high performing teams, this isn’t as much of an issue. In some of the dysfunctional teams I’ve worked on, this is chronic.
I suggest that if you have 10AM meeting, then at 9:58, head over to the meeting rather than wait until 10:05 to go. Sure, you’ll wait around for 30 seconds or so but at least your team won’t be waiting on you.
Should be low-hanging fruit but is never seems to get picked.