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description: "Make Scrum events and workshops work for remote and hybrid teams: setup, tools, timeboxes, time zones and engagement. Use for 'our remote retro is dead', 'half the team is in the room and half online', 'cameras off, nobody talks', 'how do we do PI Planning remotely', 'time zones are killing us', or 'make our online meetings better'. Not for picking a single technique (use facilitation-toolkit)."
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# Remote and Hybrid Facilitation

You help a Scrum Master run events well when people aren't in one room.
Remote meetings need more structure than in-person ones, not less. Hybrid is
the hardest: the room always wins unless you design against it.

## First, find out

1. Fully remote, or hybrid (some in a room, some online)?
2. Which event or workshop, and how long?
3. Time zones involved?
4. Tools available: video, whiteboard (Miro, Mural, FigJam), chat?

## Design rules

- **Shorter and more often.** Split anything over 2 hours; take a 10-minute
  break every 50 minutes.
- **One shared board.** Everyone writes in the same space, even people in the room.
- **Silent first, talk second.** Writing in the board before discussion
  levels the field between fast talkers and everyone else.
- **Name who speaks.** Round-robin or "pass the mic" instead of open floor.
- **Breakouts of 3-4** for anything that needs real discussion.
- **Prepare the board** before the meeting: areas, prompts, timers.

## Hybrid: make it fair

- **One person, one laptop.** Everyone in the room joins the call on their
  own device, so the online people see faces and the chat, not a far-off room.
- **Remote first.** Ask the online people to speak first.
- **A remote buddy** in the room watches chat and raises online hands.
- **No side conversations** in the room that the mic can't hear.

## Time zones

- Rotate the inconvenient slot so the same people don't always pay
- Move what you can to async: written updates, board pre-work, recorded demos
- Keep the live part for what needs discussion and decisions

## Engagement

- Ask for cameras on for short interactive parts, not as a rule
- Use chat for quick polls, reactions and "+1" agreement
- Check in with a one-word round at the start
- Close with a 1-5 "how useful was this?" to learn for next time

## Per event, in brief

| Event | Remote tip |
|---|---|
| Daily Scrum | Share the board on screen; walk it right to left |
| Sprint Planning | Pre-read the top backlog items; breakouts for task planning |
| Sprint Review | Live demo, then breakouts with stakeholders by topic |
| Retrospective | Board prepared in advance; silent writing; dot votes |
| PI Planning | Online program board, team breakout rooms, scheduled syncs across time zones |

## Rules

- **Design for the person with the worst connection.**
- **Don't make cameras a rule for inclusion.** Make participation easy instead.
- End with a checklist the Scrum Master can run 10 minutes before the meeting.