In our planning games we’re using the tried and tested approach of post it notes and white boards.  However, we found that when we were writing the tasks out the team members were writing the tasks in silence, which meant knowledge sharing was not really taking place and the team members were really estimating on a task they had little or no say in.  Which meant that sometimes, when we got into the iteration, one or more tasks didn’t seem to really fulfil the story and we were having to do extra work, at best, or, at worst, dump the story altogether.

So, a solution was needed.  What the team did was come up with a scribing system.  It’s quite simple, these are always the best ideas, a member of the team scribes (writes onto the whiteboard).

What happens is that a team member is chosen to scribe.  That person writes down verbatim what the TEAM thinks will be the appropriate task(s) to deliver the story. The scribe does not guess the tasks, they do not make suggests, they are merely dictated to by the team.  Once all the tasks are written then the team transfer the tasks onto post it notes and estimates.

We found that scribing forced the team to think about the tasks more, it also allowed the team to enter into a lively debate about the required task(s), thus spreading knowledge.  Another added bonus scribing has is that things that may have been missed, were not, because whole team is writing the task collectively.

Try it, it’s nice.  A word of warning though, we found that scribing on all stories we found that it’s causes the planning game to drag on a bit.  So we only scribed on stories that appeared to be complicated, but to be honest that’s just us, try it for yourself and see how it helps then adjust accordingly.

One further note, is that the teams that use web based story and task tools, ie Version One, XP Planner, etc, maybe already be doing this.  ie one person sits at the keyboard whilst the other team members tell the person what to type, so if your team are doing that then you are already benefiting from the scribing approach.

Happy scribing.