Over this first year of using Scrum on projects, the teams at Large Animal have learned some valuable lessons and developed some unique enhancements to the Scrum process.

These tips and techniques have helped make the process more fun, humorous, and motivating:

• Approach stories as a team. The basic idea here is to get team members to work on the same story at the same time during the sprint. If an artist, musician, and programmer all need to complete tasks to finish a story, try to have them all complete their parts to the same story at the same time rather than working on different parts of different stories.
  
  Many benefits can be derived by working this way: individual efficiency and productivity increases since there is less time spent switching between activities and less time waiting on team members to complete dependant tasks in the story, issue resolution is more effective since the entire team will be focused on completing a story at the same time, and the risk of encountering an unpleasant surprise late in the sprint is reduced.

• The 'no excuses' late box. As described earlier in this article, there are many points throughout a sprint where the team needs to come together. To help promote timely attendance to these discussions and limit the amount of time wasted by waiting for team members to show up, some teams have implemented a 'no excuses' late box. Team members who show up late to a team discussion are required to put a dollar in the late box. Proceeds from the tardy box can be used to help fund a morning breakfast get-together or another team building activity.

• Punctual Scrum contest. Similar to the 'no excuses' late box, the punctual Scrum contest was implemented at a company-wide level at Large Animal to help teams start the day (with their daily stand-up meeting) on the right foot. Held over the course of a month, the contest gives points to project teams that start their daily stand-up meeting on time at 9:35AM and have all team members in attendance.
  
  The team(s) with the most points at the end of the month are awarded a team dinner out at a restaurant. In an otherwise relatively relaxed and informal company environment, the leads found that full participation in the daily stand-up was important enough to team productivity that it was worth creating this incentive to encourage team members.

• Using a calendar for the product backlog board. Some teams have found it useful to lay the product backlog board out on an actual calendar. With the calendar laid out, it is sometimes easier to think through schedule projections and what-if scenarios.

• Question mark card in the planning poker deck. Some teams found that it was more straightforward to use a "?" card during planning poker on a story that was not adequately defined than to simply use a high value card.

• Bag of life. Prior to creation of the "?" card, a team member who felt that they didn't know enough about a story to give it an estimate might have used a high value card. This sometimes had the effect of causing a panic attack in another team member. Hence the need for the bag of life (a simple brown paper lunch bag) to help with hyperventilation. While the introduction of the "?" card has reduced the need for the bag of life, teams still keep one around just in case.

• Good conduct medals. As an additional incentive for positive team behaviors, some teams have created a set of humorous good conduct medals to recognize team members who demonstrate admirable performance.
  
  Some examples include the Medal of Merit, awarded for completing all tasks during two consecutive sprints, the Bronze Verification Medal, awarded for getting all tasks during a sprint verified, and the Burndown Cross, awarded for keeping the burndown chart up to date each day during two consecutive sprints. More than simply recognition in word, these teams have designed actual medals that can be printed out and displayed by those worthy enough to earn them.