Timeboxes in Agile Meetups

As I dive deeper into the Agile world and continue learning I’ve been going to meetups one to two times a week.  I found a few groups on meetup.com and have attended lots of meetups to learn, help, and network where I can.

For the uninitiated I thought I’d just publish what the experience typically looks like there in case you were interested in coming, but didn’t really know what to expect.  Depending on the size of the group they will break the group up into smaller groups to facilitate more in depth conversations, usually in size from 5-9 people.  This of course is in line with the recommendation of Scrum where dev team sizes are anywhere from 3-9.  Any smaller and there wouldn’t be that much collaboration and any bigger there are obviously too many to really cover as many topics as the group would like and some people are more apt to not comment if they’re in a group that is too small or too big so this helps solve that problem.  Note that this same thing could and ought to observed in your own organization.

From here you’ll take roll and then in your group you’ll be asked to write down things you’d like to talk about.  These can be anything from how to manage problems in the team, duties of a product owner/scrum master, types of software used to track project progress to which certifications are the most relevant or not to get to excel in your role.  Then you yourself get 3 or 4 votes and you’ll mark which sticky notes you want to talk about with your votes. 

The highest voted topics are discussed first and a timebox is given of anywhere from 5 – 8 minutes.  When the timer goes off the group is asked if they’d like to continue, maybe they’d like to continue, or would not like to continue.  This is done by thumbs up, thumbs sideways, or thumbs down.

Now you know what to expect at most meetups.  Others will also include a guest speaker(s) or perhaps a presentation on the company hosting the meetup along with split out group discussions. 

What are your most effective ways to holding meetings and learning and networking?