Scrum of scrums

Many Wikimedia engineering teams are using the scrum agile method. To keep projects and teams abreast of one another, we have a weekly scrum of scrums (SoS) meeting where representatives from each department exhange updates. The meeting is currently held on Wednesdays at 17:35 UTC (10:35 Pacific), and is facilitated by a rotating chair.

Resources

 * Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Scrum-of-Scrums
 * Video call: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/wikimedia.org/scrum-of-scrums
 * Phabricator: See below.

Expectations

 * On time, we'll start without you
 * Engineers speak
 * Keep it BRIEF, and relevant; we only have 30 minutes, and we will be strict about the time box
 * Each team representative is responsible for bringing findings here back to their team

Rules of engagement

 * If you must miss a meeting and cannot send a proxy, then before the meeting you must enter your answers to the SoS questions (below) on the meeting Etherpad and update your team's scrum-of-scrum tasks in Phabricator.
 * Be prepared. Have your updates and dependencies ready, and, review/update the dependency wall before the meeting.

Each rep answers the following:
 * What has your team done since we last met?
 * What will your team do before we meet again?
 * Is anything slowing your team down or getting in their way?
 * Are you about to put something in another team’s way?

Facilitator responsibilities

 * Ensure meeting starts/ends on time
 * Ensure conversation stays focussed and relevant; direct conversations to happen off-line as needed
 * Ensure there is an owner for cross-team commitments when possible (eg if one team needs a particular patch reviewed urgently, try to get someone in the room to commit to helping them out)
 * Ensure dependency wall is up-to-date
 * Ensure clear notes are taken and posted (traditionally emailed to engineering@lists.wikimedia.org, wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org as a link to a wiki page (see below)).
 * It is valuable to highlight particularly important action items/needs/touchpoints
 * It is also valuable to keep track of which teams are present at SoS and encourage missing teams to respond to the questions/review the dep board via email

More on Phabricator
You can add any task to the Scrum-of-Scrums project by adding "Scrum-of-Scrums" to its Projects field. (You can also refer to the project with hashtag,  , or  .) Only add the Scrum-of-Scrums project if you need the team coordination (don't add it just because a task is in two projects).

When you add a task to the Scrum-of-Scrums project it should be obvious which team needs something from which team.
 * You should add both team's tracking projects to the task's Projects field.
 * proposal 2014-12-10 (see WMF engineering mail) add project  to the task's Projects field.
 * You can also add a comment explaining the need.
 * You can add the requesting team's tracking task to the Blocks list.

The Scrum of Scrums was originally a card wall in Mingle; ping Arthur if would like to have write access to this.

Also consider adding the  tag to any Phabricator task that should be considered for inclusion in Tech News (see inclusion criteria and deadlines).