Is it possible to practice Agile scrum in a project where team members taking frequent time offs?

Babou

To my understanding, agile methodology requires daily scrum meeting & collaborative work environment with constant interaction between team, product owner and scrum master in a project. How to practice Agile scrum in a project where team members take time-off frequently?

Harwinder

Hi Babou,

I've been using Agile Scrum on one of my projects currently. Can you explain why team members are taking time-off frequently? What kind of time-off is it - vacation or multi-tasking on other projects?

Babou

Time-offs due to their sickness, family members not well, important personal work, somebody came home unexpectedly, etc. It is not a planned vacation & completely surprise ones. What to do?

Harwinder

Hi Babou,

I think you need to look at the underlying reasons for leave and have a process / ground rules in place to ensure that such things do not impact the project. If you think team members are doing this deliberately, then you need to get to the root causes and address those first. If somebody falls sick or has a family emergency (genuinely), then you can't do much and have to work around it.

You also need to plan for some unexpected leaves when you plan the Sprint, or account for them in your team Velocity.

I don't know whether this answers your question, but I'm open to further discussion.

Please feel to share your thoughts.

Best regards.

NickRomedios

It will be tough to implement Scrum/Agile when team members take frequent time offs. I have seen similar discussions in many other blogs and forums.
https://www.scrum-master.info/discussionForum.asp