Starting the day off right yields big rewards for our team

Every day at our office(s), we kick things off in a modern way … with an automated ‘scrum’ of sorts.

Scrum is defined as… Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.

Ok, maybe our method isn’t entirely a real ‘scrum’ but we took part in its spirit and made it (very much) our own.

How we Scrum at Regroove

Every morning, at 6:45 am, Clippy our Power Automate (formerly, ‘Flow’) ‘bot’ grabs information from a number of sources and assembles it nicely to kick off a conversation in Microsoft Teams, where we start, and end, every day.

Why Clippy? Why not. We’re (primarily) a Microsoft shop and I missed the old guy.

Clippy grabs and provides (in a channel we call ‘Today’, within Microsoft Teams):

• The weather and temperature
• Any birthdays
• Any planned absences
• Any other interesting or important dates from our Corporate Calendar including information about our working locations (such as visitors, physical disruptions to work, etc. – we have two business locations in Victoria, BC and Brentwood Bay, BC as well as folks working in Vancouver and Qualicum, never mind the flexibility of working from home).
• Any planned changes from our ‘Change Register’, which we built internally in a simple SharePoint list (naturally, finding that list as it seldom used accomplished easily with Navo), tracking when and what clients might be impacted by a change to their systems (ISP outages, Office 365 outages, etc.) so we have a heads up for trouble before they notice it)

Clippy also encourages:

• Getting ‘out loud’ what you have in store for your day. What clients you are going to have an impact of positive change with (we are ‘agents of change’), what internal initiatives (projects) you might be working on and what obstacles might stand in your way (that others can now spot and help clear)
• Sharing something you are grateful for. This isn’t required but is encouraged. I’m a firm believer that thinking about and/or recording what you are grateful for every day has a positive impact over time in your view of your life and surroundings. And often it includes being grateful for others on the team, which just feels good

So there you have it. A little tech, a little daily nudge and preparation and a whole lot of goodwill. Go Team!

A brief example of how our scrum unfolds every day. By noon, 15 or so people have piped in, leaving us all connected and sometimes inspired.