Pigs fly everyday at Decade Software Company

To be honest, there was a time when managing the Development Team was little more than controlled chaos. A simple call from a customer or defect in a vendor's code could disrupt current schedules for months. Orange County's Nick Reyes once said, "Decade will deliver on schedule when pigs fly!"

Nick was right!

Today, the Development Team commits to a set number of tasks for a 30-day period or sprint, and at the end of each of these sprints, the team consistently delivers everything it committed to—

—and everyday a pig flies through my office.

To meet schedules, the team adopted a management process called Scrum. Scrum dictates that individual team members evaluate tasks and commit to a schedule of their choosing. Going in, team members are given only the overall goals the sprint needs to achieve. The rest is up to them.

Members who commit to a schedule are called pigs. Those who do not are called chickens. Think of a ham and egg breakfast. A pig is committed to delivery, whereas a chicken only participates in delivery.

The team has daily stand-up status meetings to keep task status transparent. Everyone always knows whether the other is on task and whether they need help. The team is self-managed. I—as "Scrum Master"—manage only the process. My primary duty is to remove any impediments outside of the team's control.

Since the team is self-managed, no one can tell another when to speak. To solve this problem—and keep everyone alert—team members randomly toss a stuffed pig from speaker to speaker to determine who reports next.

This month, the Development Team is on schedule—and we owe our success partially to our flying pig.

Pictured: Patrick Glaspey and Wilbur. Photo by David Blanton.