Template

Scrum of scrums template

Several teams working on one product send one person each to line up their work: what is done, what is next, and what one team is about to drop on another.

30 minutesFor Delivery leads, tech leads and one representative from each teamAgenda room

Change the agenda first

The agenda, with a time for each part

What my team finished since last time8 min
- What did you finish that another team was waiting for?
What my team starts next6 min
- What are you picking up before we meet again?
What is in our way6 min
- What are you blocked on, and who can unblock it?
What we are about to put in somebody else's way5 min
- Which change of yours will land on another team this week?
Dependencies, each with a name5 min
- Who owns each hand-off, and by when?

How the notes read afterwards

A made-up example, so you can see the shape. In a real call each line carries the words that were said and who said them.

Payments. Finished the new refund screen; the support team can start testing Thursday.

Mobile. Blocked on the new login API — the identity team says Tuesday.

About to land on others. The data team turns off the old export on the 20th; finance still uses it.

Owners. Old export: Priya talks to finance by Friday.

Running it well

Send the person who knows the work, not the most senior person. The meeting is about hand-offs, and the engineer doing them knows the dates.
Keep one shared list of dependencies between teams and walk only that list. Status updates that affect nobody else belong in each team's own stand-up.
When two teams need to argue a problem out, give them a time straight after and move on. The other five should not have to watch.

Ways to change it

Twice a weekFor a big release, meet Monday and Thursday for fifteen minutes and only walk the dependency list.

Across time zonesRotate the meeting time each month so the same team is not always joining at night, and write each team's answers in the shared list before the call.

When to skip it. If only two teams share a product, a short weekly call between their two leads does the same job.

Questions

What is a scrum of scrums?

A short meeting where one person from each of several Scrum teams lines up the work that crosses team boundaries: what each team finished, what it starts next, and where it is blocked by, or about to block, another team.

How often should a scrum of scrums meet?

Usually two or three times a week for fifteen to thirty minutes, or daily during a large release.

Who should attend a scrum of scrums?

One person per team who knows the team's work well enough to commit to dates, plus whoever coordinates the teams.

What happens in the room

Everybody joins from the link, with no account. The agenda sits beside the call and each item fills in with what was said about it, under the name of the person who said it.

More templates

Release planningBefore a release: agree what goes in and what stays out, the order things must land in, the risks to the date, and how you would roll it back.Capacity planningBefore committing to new work: count who is really here, what is already promised, and how much is left — then decide what fits and what does not.Root cause analysisAfter something went wrong: lay out exactly what happened, ask why until you reach causes you can change, and leave with fixes that each have an owner.Risk reviewA regular look at the list of things that could go wrong: which have grown, which are new, and whether the steps meant to stop them are actually happening.Story mapping workshopLay out everything a user does, step by step, across a wall; put the detailed stories under each step; then draw a line for the smallest first release that still works end to end.Technical design reviewBefore building something large, the engineer who wrote the design walks others through it so problems are found on paper, not in production.Security reviewBefore something new goes live: what data it touches, how it could be attacked or misused, what protects it today, and what must be fixed before launch.On-call handoverThe fifteen minutes when one engineer hands the pager to the next: what broke, what is still open, and what to watch this week.

All 162 templates →

Try Meetful

Meetings that take their own notes

Free video meetings in the browser: every line of the transcript under the name of who said it, and the summary and action items when you hang up. Nothing to install — guests just open the link.

Try Meetful free See what it does