An Exercise in the Management of Scrum Smells

The Dysfunctional Scrum exercise normally goes down very well as part of agile training. Its great fun but, more importantly, lets participants experience the World’s worst Daily Scrum. The exercise can lead on to a useful discussion on how to deal with common Scrum smells.

The exercise requires 8 volunteers. Each volunteer draws a card, reads it and keeps the content secret. Each card contains one of the following instructions:

1. Be very vague about what you did yesterday.
   

2. Attempt to distract the people next to you
   

3. Get really technical about what you did or are going to do so nobody on the team understands your jargon.
   

4. You’ve been struggling with the same task for the last 5 days.
   

5. Try and talk for as long as possible about what you did yesterday or are going to do today.
   

6. Always interrupt others when they are talking.
   

7. Turn up late to the Daily Scrum.
   

8. You are the Scrum Master. Facilitate the Daily Scrum.