Chickens coming home to roost at EnvisionConnect Open House

At Decade—long before the adoption of Scrum—every product release coincided with what we called a Release Hand-off Meeting. In this session, we would demonstrate everything new in the latest upgrade. The Development Team always went into the meetings happy and proud—and we always came out completely frustrated, because the audience—Marketing and Client Services personnel—would often get into huge debates on how we could have done a better job.

In Scrum, we have our Sprint Review Meetings. Chickens are invited, but they cannot speak. I always thought that was a rather rigid rule until today—when I read Chris Spagnuolo's attempt at a Sprint Review Meeting, where chickens were allowed to speak...

"As the development team began demonstrating our new functionality, numerous questions and comments began to fly...not from the Product Owner, but from our Chickens.  The questions involved some misunderstandings about the functionality that was developed, and then degenerated into a criticism of the demonstration itself, all with the Product Owner in the background. As the ScrumMaster, I tried very hard to reduce these comments, explaining the purpose of the Sprint Review and getting back to the demos and client feedback. No such luck. The questions and comments kept coming. It was nearly the end of the hour, and we still didn't have a chance to really hear from the Product Owner. When I finally asked the Product Owner for feedback on what was demonstrated, he was very reserved, offering minimal feedback. The clucking Chickens had derailed our Sprint Review."

When I read this, I had flashbacks to our hand-off meetings and Technology Transfer Training (Triple T's) sessions of the past—and I felt sad for Chris.

Next week, we will hold what we are calling an EnvisionConnect Open House. It is a four-hour overview of the work completed in EnvisionConnect within the last year. The meeting is designed to help Marketing and Client Services "catch-up" on the review meetings they've missed.

Although I had originally not considered enforcing any Scrum-ian rules for this meeting, Chris has prompted me to reconsider. In our open house next Wednesday, feedback will be provided after the fact and through the proper channels.

Chickens will not speak.