Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Usage of Tool in an Offshore Scrum Meeting

There are number of ways how a team can conduct Scrum meeting in an offshore environment.

It is always recommended to have the answers for the 3 questions ready before attending the Scrum meeting. In an offshore environment, the Product owner sitting onsite(Ex:Australia) may not be able to attend the offshore scrum meeting (Ex: India at 10 Am in the morning) due to time differences. Sometimes, even though PO is able to attend the scrum meeting, he/she might have issues w.r.t language and accent (Ex: between French and English speakers). Such situations have taught us that, usage of tools like a scrum logger would benefit both the onsite and offshore teams.

The offshore team can make use of some tool to input the answers for the 3 questions on a day to day basis before getting into Scrum meeting. The onshore customer (who is having issue with accent or language barrier) can go through the answers daily and can get to know the impediments or any other issues without being a part of Scrum meeting.

The above scenario has been given keeping in mind that only the offshore team is part of development and the product owner is sitting onsite.