Canadian Lawyer - sample

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 6 37 When providing these updates, each team member moves any cards that have progressed on the Kan- ban board and updates their capac- ity flags to indicate what they'll be working on before the next meeting. Meetings are expected to last no more than two minutes multiplied by the number of people attending. If meetings are occurring less frequent- ly, there can be some flexibility with this timing, but the key is to not let the meetings get bogged down with too much detail. A critical aspect of the meetings is to ensure that the updates remain relevant to all team members by focusing on those core questions. Everyone has attended meet- ings where a couple of attendees monopolized the majority of the time discussing issues with little or no relevance to the rest of the group. This results in productivity losses and wasted time. More focused dis- cussions that are only relevant to a few team members are generally bet- ter held outside the group context. However, causing team members to stick to the three questions can sometimes be challenging — par- ticularly where more senior team members are accustomed to direct- ing the discussion. To address this, Scrum calls for a Scrum Master role. This is typi- cally someone that is not expected to carry out work on the project but instead is responsible for managing the Scrum process and ensuring that team members are properly adhering to the protocols. This person must have the authority to ensure that all team members answer their three questions and ensure that no one person is monopolizing the floor. In our law firm's culture mid-level per- sonnel, including senior associates or junior partners who aren't expected to complete substantive work on the file, are ideal Scrum Masters. In cer- tain cases, the lead lawyer on a file or alternating individuals can also serve the role, provided that they are able to ensure the team sticks to the pro- tocol and aren't afraid to intervene if the rules aren't being followed. In other law firms, other individu- als might work better. The key is that the Scrum Master is sufficiently senior to have some influence over partners. Since they aren't account- able for project deliverables they can serve as a more independent enforc- er of the rules to keep everyone on track. Scrum works best when the team periodically conducts a lessons learned or after action review, called a Retrospective. These typically occur at the conclusion of specific projects or at set intervals (perhaps once every month or two). These meetings would often run longer than the daily stand-ups (approxi- mately an hour), but would still involve all team members speaking for an equal amount of time. The discussion would focus on reaching team consensus around the following three questions: What is working well? What is not working well? What should be tried that is dif- ferent? Based on the outcome of those discussions, the team would agree to fine-tune their approach and incor- porate lessons learned that could be applied to future work. In summary, Scrum can be a very powerful tool that creates a transpar- ent and collaborative team environ- ment, focused on maximizing client value, and the empowerment of team members. In Part III, the final segment of this series, we will focus on the application of Lean process improve- ment to project management and how it can help develop a culture of continuous improvement. "A critical aspect of the meetings is to ensure that the updates remain relevant to all team members by focusing on those core questions"

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