Who/when: This assignment is completed by all students, after several sprints have been completed.
Genre: Written collaborative narrative
Audience: Current team members and future Senior Project students.
Purpose: Reflect on the mechanics of the scrum, from multiple perspectives; write collaboratively to produce a common statement on how daily scrums are conducted; critique the description collectively to provide an introduction to Scrum for future students.
Communication skills: writing, speaking, teaming

For people who have never been involved in Scrum before, the idea is a bit mysterious. The basic idea is so simple, but what really happens? The details are not usually mentioned in the "in a nutshell" descriptions you get on Scrum websites - but the details can make a lot of difference. We are going to concentrate on the details here, including conventions or habits that we may have adopted unconsciously.

Outcomes. In this assignment you will get experience in the following skills:

1. reflecting on and critiquing your own methods, and suggesting ways to improve them;
2. identifying the situated aspects of a conversation (outside of the actual verbal content) that can affect the value of the conversation;
3. writing a detailed narrative of a conversational situation (in this case, the daily scrum);
4. writing a consensus document collaboratively;
5. critiquing the actions described in the consensus, proposing suggestions for how to improve them.

Part 1. Time: 60 minutes

Write a description of what happens during a daily scrum: the initial standup meeting, plus whatever follows. We are looking for a complete description - don't leave details out. When and where you meet, how you are situated in the meeting, who speaks and when, what tools you use and how you use them, what kind of speaking style you use - All of these and more are relevant. Where possible, indicate what factors you think are helpful to the scrum (e.g. having a stand-up meeting has the effect of keeping meetings short and on topic). Not all factors may be helpful: some may be neutral, and others may be downright harmful.

There are a lot of different ways of viewing a complex activity like a scrum. Let's use the following heuristic to guide the descriptions:

• Particle (snapshot): View the activity as a static structure, existing in isolation. In this view, you can describe the location, actors and objects involved in the meeting, and how they are oriented with respect to one another.
• Wave (movie): View the changes that the activity undergoes over time. Here you can describe the phases of the meeting as it evolves from the standup reports to later activities, and how much time is spent at each phase.
• Field (hypertext): View the activity as occupying a place in a greater system. Each daily scrum is related to activities and objects generated at other times; make the connections.

Post your description to the wiki.

Part 2. Time: 60 minutes

At the next Sprint Retrospective, get together as a team and share the descriptions orally.

1. Each team member will spend 4 minutes presenting his/her description, focusing on items that haven't been identified by previous presenters. The Scrum Master will assemble the descriptions on the whiteboard into one consensus description.
2. The team will then spend 20 minutes editing the whiteboard material (adding, merging or changing items).
3. Then it will spend 20 minutes identifying aspects of the scrum that should be changed, and suggesting appropriate changes.

Part 3 (Scrum Master only). Time: 60 minutes

Take the draft document on the whiteboard and convert it into a complete written document. Your audience is future Software Project students, so be sure to introduce new ideas and terms carefully. Post the document on the project wiki.

Grading criteria

1. Does your narrative display an attention to all aspects of the scrum— both verbal and nonverbal?
2. Does your narrative effectively use all three perspectives in the particle/wave/field heuristic?
3. Did you convey the details of your written description to your team effectively during the discussion?
4. Did you contribute to the editing of the scrum description and the brainstorming for changes to the scrum?
5. Does the consensus document concisely and completely capture the input from the team members?
6. Are the technical aspects of your writing sound: grammar; spelling; complete sentences; tailored to the intended audience, with unfamiliar terms defined?

Grading rubric