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00:45
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Q: How to handle a scrum member speaking for too long?

crh225I have read this question, but my issue is a little bit more specific: how do I get one person to not talk for as long in a scrum? I'm the scrum master. THIS IS RELATED TO AGILE/SCRUM MEETINGS - NOT NORMAL BUSINESS MEETINGS We have a person in our daily standup/scrum meeting that takes at least...

Perhaps cut off is too strong of a word. Perhaps you should ask her (in an email for example) to meet with you after your next scrum meeting and tell her that a number of people have approached you and told you that the scrums are taking too long. You would like to meet with her/him before the next one to try to get the 'major points' out and not talk about the unnecessary ones.
@Riorank That should be an answer, not a comment.
What exactly does a release manager do? Scrum speakers are usually limited to the development team, people actually coding the software to be released. Are you sure this person shouldn't be considered a chicken? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig
Dan
Dan
When I worked at a company that did daily stand ups for agile, we limit ourselves to just 10-15 minutes for the entire meeting. Perhaps you can push that idea along to your manager and try to get everyone to comply.
How to cut her off nicely: "Five minutes, your time is over ... now. Sorry, next one please".
One person takes too much time during standup meetings and that leads to the conclusion "we're practicing scrum for scrum's sake?" Are there other problems going on with how this team is doing Scrum? You should be reinforcing previous instructions and how you don't feel this person is following them.
@JeffO, heck yes. we don't stand up. we don't answer the three key questions. These meetings have been happening in this fashion before I arrived to the company a few months ago. Nobody was a scrum master. they just go around the table and say what they feel is necessary to say. I came from a company who did agile/scrum correctly.
@PhilipKendall Joe said it best.
As scrum master, you're supposed to facilitate the meeting. So perhaps its time to get back to what the updates are supposed to convey.
"I feel as if the person has to overcompensate and tell everyone how much they work because they have to work weekends/nights when most people aren't working and using the systems." If you think this is the root of the problem, maybe you should also be looking for ways to address it? Obviously, that's a social/psychological issue, but it's probably not good for the team for them to have that perception.
00:45
You could just simplify this whole thing and send an e-mail to the whole team stating that "Your standup should take no longer than 30 seconds to a minute". And leave it at that..
I used to go into details about every bug I fixed, the scrum master simply said "So you are fixing up the bug list you have, ok" at the end of my talk. I realized then that that was all I needed to say. Sometimes summarizing it for them after can make them realize what key points were needed.
I guess I don't understand the focus on one person when no one is really doing it correctly. Seems like you need to give training, feedback and consequences about how to conduct a stand up meeting. That's the scrum master's job - making sure they're dong scrum.
Lee
Lee
I would post as an answer but I don't have the rep yet. In my opinion Scrum done well involves an element of fun. I've known people to give out a silly hat to those who are late for a standup, for instance. So a simple idea would be an egg/sand timer. Say to your colleagues that once the timer has run out you must reset it and the next person speaks. Also it's up to the scrum master to ensure Scrum is being followed correctly.
Five minutes is too long but I don't see what's so bad about reporting that you have a call at a certain time. You need to have a lot of phone calls planned for such a report to take five minutes. Could it be that this individual is not talking about too many things, but instead going into too much detail on each one? That's much easier to address: "let's take that offline". Standups aren't issue tracker updates.
@LightnessRacesinOrbit, yes it starts out with: I have a call at 9am. The call is with persons x,y,z. X,Y,Z are the managers of the datacenter. We are going to talk about blah, hoping to achieve blah. We will probably have a followup meeting after....
00:45
This is not a duplicate of asking someone to get to the point. While similar, they are different in that the speaker isn't simply talking around the point or adding extraneous details, but rather not adressing the subject correctly.
@crh: I know I'm preaching to the choir here but, for the record, if that were me, I'd instead say "I have a call at 9am with x, y and so on about blah project, then after that...." easy to fit into a minute :) Frankly I don't care whether anyone else in my team is "interested" in my call: it's part of my day and I have every right to let people know I'm doing it. And it does serve a purpose because for that period of time you will probably not be contactable and you won't be spending scrum hours on scrum tasks, so it's a useful thing to mention.
I wonder if this might better addressed on Project Management?
 
12 hours later…
12:53
@yochannah I do think "Project Management" is the appropriate place for such a question.

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