The Scrums blog

Invite people by email (2026-11-09): Type in the addresses of the people you want on your team, and each one gets an invitation of their own. Also today, scru.ms starts sending email, and we start recording how the site is used, to find problems faster.
Scrums is open (2026-11-08): Retros, sprint poker, standups, health checks, pages, chat and calls, in one place, and free. Here's what's in it, and how to try it before you sign up.
Run your first Scrums retro on Monday: a checklist (2026-11-06): Ten minutes on a Friday afternoon, and Monday's retro runs itself. Here's the whole setup, from signing up to the summary.
Remember, remember: where did we decide that? (2026-11-05): Tonight is Bonfire Night in the UK, and its old rhyme begins "Remember, remember the fifth of November". Teams forget faster than they think. Here's how to make sure what your team decides can be found again.
Stress Awareness Day: fewer pings, more focus (2026-11-04): Today is Stress Awareness Day, in the middle of International Stress Awareness Week. One everyday source of pressure at work is easy to reduce: the constant pull of notifications. Here's how to set a team's tools up to interrupt less.
The secret ballot, at work (2026-11-03): Today is Election Day in the US. The secret ballot that elections depend on was first used in Victoria, Australia, in 1856. The idea behind it works just as well in a team meeting.
Conway's law, and the shape of your teams (2026-11-02): In 1968, Melvin Conway observed that organizations build systems that mirror how they communicate. If he's right, how your teams are set up, and how they talk to each other, matters as much as any process.
A Halloween retro: what's haunting your team? (2026-10-30): Halloween is tomorrow. A themed retro is an easy way to get a team talking about the things that quietly scare it, like the fragile deploy, the untested module and the meeting nobody wants.
From "LO" to threads (2026-10-29): On October 29, 1969, the first message crossed the ARPANET. It was meant to say LOGIN and got as far as LO before the system crashed. Fifty-seven years on, sending messages is easy. Keeping a team's chat calm and findable is the hard part.
Record the demo, skip the meeting (2026-10-28): Not every update needs a meeting. A few minutes of screen recording, watched when people have time, often says more than half an hour on a call, and it's still there next week.
1-2-4-All: get every voice in, even on a call (2026-10-27): 1-2-4-All takes about a quarter of an hour and gets ideas from everyone in the room, not just the confident few. Breakout rooms make it work just as well on a call.
The week the clocks disagree (2026-10-26): Europe's clocks went back yesterday. North America's don't change until next Sunday. For one week, every meeting across the Atlantic moves by an hour for someone, unless your calendar knows the rules.
What remote teams need from their meetings (2026-10-23): A remote retro isn't an in-person retro on a video call. The things that make a room work, like seeing who's still writing or hearing the timer, have to be built into the tool.
Six tabs for one team (2026-10-22): A retro tool, a poker tool, a standup bot, a docs tool, a chat app and a video app is a lot of logins for one team. With next year's budgets being set this quarter, it's worth counting yours.
The planning fallacy, and how teams beat it (2026-10-21): In 1979, Kahneman and Tversky named our habit of underestimating how long things take, and Douglas Hofstadter joked that it always takes longer, even when you allow for that. Teams can do better than individuals.
Let the votes decide what you talk about (2026-10-20): In many meetings, the topic that gets discussed is the one raised first or loudest. Dot voting is a simple fix, as long as the votes stay hidden until everyone has cast theirs.
Psychological safety, in practice (2026-10-19): When Google studied what made its teams effective, the strongest factor was whether people felt safe to take risks in front of each other. Here's what that looks like in a team's ordinary meetings.
Should the boss run the retro? (2026-10-16): Today is Boss's Day in the US. So here's a question for managers: are you the right person to facilitate your team's retrospective?
Retro action items that actually get done (2026-10-15): The most common complaint about retros isn't the meeting. It's that nothing changes afterwards. Five habits that close the loop.
World Standards Day: write your team's own (2026-10-14): Today the world's standards bodies celebrate the agreements that let things work together. Teams need a few agreements of their own. Here's how to write a working agreement that people actually keep.
What Ada Lovelace's notes teach teams about writing things down (2026-10-13): Today is Ada Lovelace Day. The work she's remembered for was a set of notes on someone else's paper, about three times as long as the paper itself. Teams could learn from that.
Half the team is off today. Write the standup down. (2026-10-12): Today is Thanksgiving in Canada and a federal holiday in the US, and an ordinary Monday nearly everywhere else. Teams that cross borders run into this all year. A written standup doesn't need everyone in the room at 9:30.
Check on your team, not just your sprint (2026-10-09): Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day. Sprint charts tell you how the work is going. A regular health check tells you how the team is.
Fibonacci, T-shirts or powers of two? Picking a deck (2026-10-08): Estimation decks skip numbers on purpose. People judge differences in proportion, as Ernst Weber found in the 1830s. Here's how to pick the deck that suits what your team is estimating.
Why planning poker works, and when it doesn't (2026-10-07): James Grenning described planning poker in 2002 to stop estimation meetings going round in circles. Its real trick is older: keep the first number hidden, and nobody anchors on it.
The one sentence to read before every retro (2026-10-06): Norm Kerth's Prime Directive is twenty-five years old and still the best way to open a retrospective. Here's why it works, and how to make it more than words on a slide.
Meetings everyone can take part in (2026-10-05): Three years ago today, WCAG 2.2 became a web standard, and October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month in the US. A good moment to ask whether everyone on your team can really take part in your meetings.
Your retro is sensitive data (2026-10-02): October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Here's a question it rarely asks: where does your team's most honest feedback end up?
Start the fourth quarter with a look back (2026-10-01): October 1 opens the last quarter of the year. Before you plan it, spend an hour on what the last one taught you.