Hello,
I’m looking to implement a lightweight Agile/Scrum process for our FRC team this year and looking for a simple video or article introducing the concepts. I’ve used Agile/Scrum for several years but instead of me lecturing on the topic, I’d like to see if someone else has made something already.
My first thought was obviously to search for videos on the topic, but was surprised at how opaque and convoluted the “introductions” on the topic were. Scrum can be really simple and shouldn’t need a 60 minute lecture full of buzzwords.
Has anyone else had any luck?
BTW, we are going to try the Monday.com “Dev” package that’s available for FRC teams, since it seems to have most of the necessary features.
Thanks.
@s-neff Thanks.
I will be the Scrum-master initially (to provide a model), but expect the team captain will learn how to manage the scrum pretty quickly.
I’d try to just explain the goals and method to them without the weird names.
If it takes you more than ten minutes and two slides it’s too heavy a process.
Make sure they know how to call you back to following your own process and you should be good
Personal opinion, but echoing s-neff - any enterprise-grade agile or scrum introduction is going to be far too heavy for an FRC team. It doesn’t make sense to apply it wholesale. Which I think we’re on the same page with since you’ve said you’re going to do a smaller version of it.
If I could recommend an approach, keep pushing to be as lightweight as possible. Including in your communication. Pick and choose the subset you’ll apply to the team intentionally. Then, present it without title or jargon. Simply state the “what”, presenting it as “this is our team’s communication and planning process”.
From there, if students are curious, they can learn the more academic background that drives the reasoning for the process.
Monday.com is nice but it’s expensive. Is it confirmed that there will be complimentary seats this season? If not then I recommend Asana as a cheap alternative.
Never mind I see on the blog from October that it’s GTG this season.
We were able to get unlimited seats on their free package this year by contacting support and explaining our situation. I’m not too sure where Monday is currently at with their FRC support that has been discussed as one moment it seems they’re supporting it and the next they seem like they’re not. However, I’ve had nothing but good experiences with their support staff!
I said the same thing. When I reached out to them after getting no response for the FRC complimentary seats and declined for the non-profit plan, I had one last Hail Mary with their educational discount and ended up getting more than I initially asked!
Thanks to all.
We’ve been happy with Monday.com. If you want to use sprints, just make sure you get their “Dev” package and not their standard “Work Management” package. The “Dev” package has to be installed separately and there is no crossover between the packages, so all tasks must be recreated.
I looked at using Atlassian Jira (which I’ve used for years), but it really is too heavy. When I tried to get help from Atlassian support; they absolutely refused to give us a non-profit discount if we even mentioned “High School”, regardless of their 16 and older rule. So we moved on to Monday.com.
Regarding Agile/Scrum, I’m just trying to get the students away from the waterfall approach, where the Captains says, “but I told them to finish in six-weeks and the Gantt chart says it will be done, so why aren’t they done yet?”
My basic plan is for the team leads to break up the work into smaller multiday tasks and then track them by two-week (or one-week) sprints. So they get insight sooner if something is delayed or there is a problem. The daily standup gets everyone to verbalize blockers or potential problems sooner and to trumpet their achievements as well. Then at the end of the sprint the team-leads can discuss how things went. That’s all I want. Everything else is just extra complexity.
Sweet, so we’re doing the same this year. We’re also maintaining a station which always has our task list up, so students can freely enter tasks when they think of them, and have a one-safe-source for the answer of “what needs done now?”
We just explained it to students. They just know it as “the meeting where we pull up the bounty board and go line by line asking if each person is stuck”.
We actually do call it the bounty board, because that’s what the student who wanted it conceptualized it as in his head, and it stuck. Little does he (currently) know he reinvented a portion of scrum.
Milestones are tied to the Gantt chart, which is mostly used just as a “what’s upcoming” and “what might have to slide if we miss a self-imposed deadline” discussion tool.
I’ve found Trello to be a useful tool even at the free level and it is run by Atlassian. I have a list setup for each “stage” and a card for each project.
