Pigs And Chickens

Last Updated: January 11, 2017

Definition - What does Pigs And Chickens mean?

Pigs and chickens is a slang term used in agile development, or more specifically in scrums, which describes the different participants of the daily scrum meeting. The term is derived from a fable: One day, the chicken suggests to his friend, the pig, that they should open a restaurant. The pig agrees and asks what the name of the restaurant should be. The chicken suggests Ham and Eggs. The pig objects, feeling that the restaurant will be a much bigger commitment for him; he will have to be slaughtered while the chicken only have to lay eggs.

The pig and the chicken story delineates the kinds of people who attend the daily scrum meetings. The pigs are those who are on the chopping block - the committed people who have stakes in the project and are essential to its success or failure. The chickens are those who attend the meeting but have no direct relevance to the update, meeting progress or project. Thus, the chickens are the people who have something to say but usually have nothing to contribute. Considered the meeting eavesdroppers, chickens usually comprise 50 to 80 percent of the attendees at any given meeting.

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Techopedia explains Pigs And Chickens

The pig and chicken fable is a popular one in scrum. It is is used to represent two kinds of participants in a scrum meeting: the ones who are actually committed to getting work done, and those who are there just because they want to know what is going on with the other groups in the department. The chickens might be involved in the overall project - and might even be pigs in their own right - but they are considered chickens when they intrude on meetings involving projects where they do do not have a hands-on role.