Friday, May 7, 2010

The Committer


Ever wanted to make a Scrum teams committing process a bit more formal? So did I.



I decided to buy and then break a perfectly good Bob the Builder tool belt with a nice catchy "Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!" song in it. Every time you pushed the tool belt the o so catchy tune started playing. The destroying was easy and fun, the building it up again as a "Committer" had a bit more labor into it. Drilling, soldering and more demolition.
I extracted the sound circuit from the tool belt and put it into a black plastic box. I added a speaker from an old phone and hooked it all up to 10 smaller boxes. Each of the small boxes could break the power to the sound circuit using a old fashion, fancy looking, toggle switch. I topped the box with the circuit up with a big red button to start the song with.
If all team members agrees to commit to a certain story in a sprint planning meeting the black box sing out the catchy tune in a very formal but still engaging way when the button is pushed. The story is committed. If any of the team members objects to the committing of a story there switch can be turned off and nothing will happen.


The Committer has now served us well in 32 sprints. Making management looking strangely at us, but I can see there envy.