Time management in a fast-paced environment, such as a marketing agency like ours, is vital to success. That’s why, towards the end of last year, we brought in some new practices, to help make us more effective when it comes to time management.
Within the Scrum framework, there are two methods that complement each other – daily stand up meetings and weekly sprint meetings, both of which, have proven to be a success. Every morning the team gets together to share their three main focuses for that day, highlighting any help they require, and if they managed to complete yesterday’s tasks.
Below, we’ve put together a short guide, explaining exactly what we do to ensure our time management is effective!
Stand-Up Meetings
These take place every morning at 10 am.
They should be short and to the point. Each team member provides an answer to each of the following:
- Today I need help with
- My main focus today is
- Have you achieved yesterday’s tasks?
The most important item is number one, as it provides an opportunity to arrange a time with other team members.
To keep the stand-up short, individuals let the person know they need to speak to them and nothing more.
Sprint
This takes place every Wednesday from 10 am – 11 am.
We have recently introduced the scrum methodology, where work is completed in two-week iterations known as a ‘sprint’.
So, what exactly is a ‘sprint’?!
A sprint is used to ensure that the allocated work is completed in two-week iterations, defining priorities as a team on the first day of the sprint and then reflecting on these priorities on the last day of the sprint.
Throughout the sprint, the team has a daily stand-up meeting that revolves around the sprint’s goals.
Sprint Planning Meeting
Below is an overview of how a sprint meeting is run.
- Each team member brings ideas for activities/tasks that should be the business’s main focus for the current sprint.
- The activities/tasks should be chosen before the meeting.
- They should add value to the business.
- Example: “I think we should focus on getting all pending websites live” – I need help from multiple members of the team to make this happen and it adds value because we can invoice the clients once the sites are live.
- As a team we prioritise the top 5 items, these then become the sprint goals for the next two weeks.
Retrospective
At the end of the sprint, the team has a meeting called a retrospective, or ‘retro’ for short, where we look at what went well and what could be improved.
These findings are then applied to future sprints to help make the process as beneficial for the business as possible.
