When do your chickens show up?

One thing with Scrum that I never really saw happen was chickens showing up for the daily stand-up and get a feel for where the team was heading. Essentially I never saw chickens other than in sprint demos. That was until recently.

But before I tell you that story, a quick recap; in Scrum chickens refer to people who are not part of the team but often care about how the team is doing. It might be representatives from other teams, managers etc.

So what happened on my recently was that a chicken showed up for our planning poker session. If you don't know what planning poker is it doesn't matter. The session is about looking at user stories that we likely will do in the near future and estimate the size of them. Planning poker is just a format that encourages the whole team to understand and think about every user story.

The thing that was brilliant about this session was the chicken showing up because as the team was discussing the user stories to clarify and understand them I realized the chicken was doing the same thing. And the chicken got a much better view of what the team was about to do than attending stand-ups which in my experience often turn out to be very "tactical" planning sessions for the near future and very little about where the team is heading.

So what does it look like on your team - when do your chickens show up and how is that working for you?