Managing Conference Calls

If you are managing remote teams, there is a high probability that you are doing scrums and sprint planning sessions thru GoToMeeting or other similar tools. Wall Street Journal published an useful article on this topic today - Surviving a Conference Call.

Key takeaways from the article are:

1. Scrum Master (Meeting leader) must set firmer ground rules than they do for face-to-face meetings and tighter, more explicit agendas
2. If a new member joins the scrum team (whether remote or onsite team), Scrum Master should ask everyone in the team to introduce themselves to the new member
3. Scrum Masters should talk less than in face-to-face meetings and listen more
4. Rotate the note taking responsibility among team members to increase the engagement