Scrum in 10 minutes

One of the Agile Coaches I work with recently charged the rest of the agilists in our team to come up with our version of "Scrum in 10 minutes". There were no rules; entries could be presentations, videos, stop-motion movies - whatever.

Keen to experiment / expand my skills with the online presentation tool prezi.com, I decided to create my entry there.

You can check it out here or, if you have Adobe Flash installed, you should see it below. If you don't want to install Flash (it's old tech, after all, and prone to security flaws), you can also find it within the Prezi app (Android, iPhone, iPad - Windows and Mac desktop versions are restricted to paying users).

Is Retrium worth it?

Google seems to have picked up on my Agile proclivities and has begun delivering me adverts that are aimed squarely at that side of my personality.

One such banner I was presented with yesterday was for a tool called Retrium - an online collaboration app that's designed to facilitate retrospectives. Based on the Lean Coffee style of agendaless meeting, the 10,000 foot summary view might read "like post-it notes but online, archived, suitable for remote teams, and all without chopping down trees to make paper" - or something. There's a reason I'm not in marketing.

There's a demo you can try, but without other real people about the only benefit from trying it is that you get to see how it works mechanically; I certainly wouldn't be prepared to handover my credit card based on the simulation alone, but I have to admit the interface is flawless - it's nice and easy to use.

If you do have a team that wants to give it a go, Retrium do allow you to perform two retros at no cost; I haven't taken them up on this offer yet, as I'm not currently in that position, but I'm curious enough to file it away here for consideration the next time that pops up - especially if I'm working with a team that has remote members.

Whether it will prove to be worth the $5 per user per month asking price is something I suspect I'll only be able to assess after giving it a shot.