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Scrum - Team Culture and Wall Manifesto


In the Scrum framework one of the key components is the wall and daily stand-up. In some organisations I worked with the whole concept of the wall is not accepted by many developers, because of the stand-up necessity and "time waste".

Very often all that methodology is used for the sake of methodology and not to achieve what we actually do - adding or creating value to our customer (usually called "The Business").

I can understand frustration that is caused by the wall and stand-up process. From the software developer perspective it is really a waste of time for the following reasons:

1. In 95% of cases developers are head down working like hell delivering valuable outcomes that they are accountable for. Extra effort to go to the wall, staying there for 15-30 minutes and listening or not listening to what others were doing yesterday and will be doing tomorrow is annoying for them;

2. The mere fact of having to do something mandatory to do that looks like useless activity is a strong demotivator;

3. In majority of cases the wall is a physical wall with the need to write on sheets of paper for the data already existing in some software system (duplication) and all the activity concentrating on multiplying redundant information and moving it on the wall. This process can be automated by using available tools, i.e. http://www.versionone.com/, https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/agile, http://www.targetprocess.com etc. However many people still tend to use the real wall, not virtual.

It seems that contemporary IT specialists are driven much by the Scrum idea, therefore frustrations of software developers and other information workers should be somehow transformed into productive energy.

First step to achieve that is to create and discuss within a team a so-called Wall Manifesto – the declaration of the wall that will be used and purpose of it relevant to your team. The statements of the manifesto should define what your goals to achieve are and what problems or weaknesses you would like to overcome with it.

An example:

  • Quality outcome over output 
  • Efficient team over busy team 
  • Face to face conversation over email
  • Timely delivery over bottlenecks 

Happy scrumming!
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