As an Agile Coach and Scrum practitioner, I have seen many teams conducting their Daily Scrums, face-to-face or online, and noticed that some were not getting a lot of value out of these 15 minutes.
I will analyze my observations and introduce a simple guideline for the teams to help stay focussed on their Sprint goal and create opportunities for collaborating, or removing blockers together.
What can go wrong with the Daily Scrum?
While the Scrum Guide is very clear about the Daily Scrum's purpose, participants, inputs, and expected outcomes, it leaves an open space to every team about how they should organize and facilitate the event. Let's have a look:
Daily Scrum
The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work.
The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team. To reduce complexity, it is held at the same time and place every working day of the Sprint. If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers.
The Developers can select whatever structure and techniques they want, as long as their Daily Scrum focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal and produces an actionable plan for the next day of work. This creates focus and improves self-management.
Daily Scrums improve communications, identify impediments, promote quick decision-making, and consequently eliminate the need for other meetings.
The Daily Scrum is not the only time Developers are allowed to adjust their plan. They often meet throughout the day for more detailed discussions about adapting or re-planning the rest of the Sprint’s work.
https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#daily-scrum
- Why: to inspect and adapt the work towards achieving the Sprint Goal.
- Who: the Developers (Scrum Master and Product Owner are not required to participate).
- When: once a day, max. 15min
- How: up to the Developers
And here is exactly the point that comes from my observations working with Scrum teams:
Depending on how the Daily Scrum is being structured and facilitated, the quality of the conversations and the outcomes of this event vary in a dramatical way.
In the version 2017 of the Scrum Guide, the following questions have been suggested as an example of how to conduct the Daily Scrum.
• What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?
These questions have been used and recommended by Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and practitioners over the years.
The intentions behind these three questions makes sense to me, and they make a good recipe for a short, focussed, and effective Daily Scrum.
- Create transparency about where the team stands at the present moment towards the Sprint Goal
- Uncover possible dependencies, unnecessary work, misaligned priorities, impediments
- Create opportunities for collaboration between Developers
However, if the Daily Scrum is being facilitated without keeping in mind these intentions and without ensuring that the work is being replanned towards achieving the Sprint Goal, these commonly recommended 3 questions may have the evil effect of turning the Daily Scrum into a status report. Even more, by making it a turn table format - which happens way too often, participants will only focus on themselves ("What do I need to say when it's my turn?", "Okay, I'm done! I can now unplug until the end of the call.") and eventually degrade the team into a mere group of individuals.
It is probably for such reasons that version 2020 immediately removed this section.
“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior. “ – Dee Hock, Founder and Former CEO of VISA International
Yet, Developers still need to conduct their Daily Scrum, and beginner teams may want to get equipped with simple principles to follow in order to get consistent, and valuable outcomes.
A simple Daily Scrum facilitation guide
This simple guide is intended for beginner Scrum teams to facilitate their Daily Scrum, as a team, and focussed on their Sprint Goal.
I am trying to make it not too prescriptive, and not too vague at the same time (!!).
Transparency
Before the Daily Scrum, make sure that the Scrum Board is updated and reflects the current status (more generally, update the board regularly at any time of the day so that no time is wasted during the Daily Scrum).
Inspect
Start with restating the Sprint Goal, to make sure that everyone is mindful of it in their conversations and decisions.
Ask to everyone the question: "Are we on track to achieve the sprint goal?". This is a questions that should be answered as a team, not as individuals.
Adapt
- If no, then ask what is preventing us from achieving it? what can we do about it? do we need to discuss and negotiate with the Product Owner?
→ Uncover impediments, challenges, issues, emerging work and decide a plan to address these. - If yes, then ask what do we want to complete by tomorrow? (ie. focus on finishing work rather than starting work) and how we should organize the work in order to achieve it?
→ Set up a goal for the coming day, and decide who works on what (individually or as pairs/mob).
Additional tips for the facilitator
- Give everyone a chance to participate and speak (watch for people who monopolize the conversation, or people who did not say anything yet).
- Consider using check-in, or check-out, in order to connect and engage the participants.
- Don't participate to the conversation (specially if you facilitate as a Developer), or make it clear when you want to temporarily switch your role from facilitator to Developer.
- This is not a status report, and this is always good to remind it.
- If the conversation becomes detailed and technical, this is a good moment to intervene and ask to park the topic for later and come back to the original goal of this Scrum event.
