Last week, Rex came to me asking if the Webmail Apps team could have their sprint planning at a park here in Blacksburg. I thought it was a great idea, and yesterday we had an awesome morning of planning, followed by some grilling.

Lately, the project management team has been pushing a lot more of these type outings. In my opinion, it stems from the fact that developers hate meetings. Even though sprint planning meetings are needed and important, teams hate sitting in some conference room for hours. Especially when they did it last month, and the month before.

Today’s scrum tip is one I have stolen from our project management team. Get your team out of a conference room for planning. Switch it up. Your teams will enjoy the change of scenery.

1. I bought a house!
2. I am moving into that house
3. Product backlogs

Our company blog, Rackspace Email & App’s blog, just had a post from Rex. It’s all about Scrum here at Rackspace (yes, I no longer respond to Mailtrust since our recent name change).

I encourage you all to follow the Rackspace Email and Apps blog (yes, shameless self promotion) for any tips from our project management team. Rex is the PM for all my software development teams and all my scrum posts are either stolen or inspired by interactions with him and those teams.