Scrum Ceremony; Daily Scrum Meeting
The daily scrum meeting, or as it is very often referred to, the daily stand-up, is the 15 minute meeting that makes product development teams more productive and efficient. It is very important that this meeting does not end up in lots of detailed discussions, but strictly time boxed to 15 – 30 minutes.
The daily scrum meeting is often lead / moderated by the scrum master, but I have found it very helpful in my own teams to have a rotating meeting leader. This increases buy in and attendance.
Although it is proven that these daily stand-up meetings are essential in the team process and productivity, sometimes these daily scrum meetings gets a bad reputation. Some even argue it’s an outdated practice and a waste of time. I strongly disagree with these view of the daily scrum meeting. I have found found that this meeting style helps scrum masters to run our team more effectively. During my coaching sessions and workshops, I have noticed some pretty big differences between those who value scrum meetings and those who don’t. Most of these differences have to do with the way the meeting is setup and run. When really mastered, daily scrum meetings can become an invaluable tool for keeping your development team on track.
Having said that I have put together, based on my own experiences and feedback from my coaching sessions, some of my the best tips and tricks to help your daily scrum meeting run like a lean, mean, effective agile machine. Let’s be clear. Everyone does stand-ups a little differently. That’s perfectly fine, as it is very important to tweak the processes to what fits best for your team. No matter what you do, focus and efficiency are the main priorities.
Remain standing!
It may sound like a joke or a mockery, it may even sound like a stupid formality, but trust me. There is a reason this meeting is very often referred to as a daily stand up meeting. Staying on your feet is the core principle of the daily scrum meeting. It reduces rambling and keeps you focused. So how we can everybody to stand up? An easy solution to eliminate sitters is the meeting in a room without chairs or keep all chairs on one side of the room. Forcing someone to go out of their way to pull up a chair is an excellent way of silently keeping your team on their feet. This will also work for remote teams, where when dialling in you connect two or more meeting rooms where part of the team is standing.
The 3-question agenda
The daily scrum meeting, in an agile development world, is centred on a variation of the same three simple questions, which every team member has to answer:
What did you accomplish since the last meeting?
What are you working on until the next meeting?
What is getting in your way or keeping you from doing your job?
I myself find the following variation the most powerful;
What did you do yesterday?
What will you be doing today?
Who or what do you need to be successful?
The answers to these questions tell the team exactly what is getting done and what needs improvement. Listing any problems or issues you may have is crucial, so that your team will know to help you out. Even more important, small problems should always be addressed so that they don’t turn into big problems.
Tip: The answer to the first question should only be a brief mention. Far more time should be spent talking about current tasks and the issues you may face.
Have your project management tool visible
This could be in the form of a physical Kanban board or software like JIRA. It’s really important for your team to see what is being finished and what is taking longer than expected. This is especially helpful for teams that spend too long answering the first key question.
Tip: Getting everyone into the habit of reviewing the project management tool right before the meeting results in a big efficiency boost.
It is a collaborative effort not a scrum master status update!
One of the most common daily scrum meeting mistakes is making the meeting a turn-based one on one chat with the project manager or scrum master. This completely wastes the purpose of the daily stand-up and should be avoided at all costs. Having this daily stand-up meeting provides valuable time that should be treated as collaborative effort and alignment for the whole team.
Tip: A good way to keep scrum meetings efficient is to establish a simple rule: “Everything you say should be valuable to everyone in the room. Individual talks can happen at any time of the day aside from the stand up meeting.”
Plan the meeting around your team
Off course you will find that in the real world it’s impossible to stick to a strict schedule, but it is very important to develop some sort of routine for your daily stand up meetings. Without a routine, procrastination will take effect and meetings will forever rescheduled and never happen.
Whether you have it every day, every other day, or even maybe once a week, consistency is key. What I have found to be the best time to run my daily stand-up meeting is either at the beginning of the day, early in the morning, as the thing the team does after coming in, or late in the afternoon as the last thing on the agenda of the team members.
The scrum meeting is less about strict rules and more about maximizing productivity, as long as it is setup in a regular routine that accommodates your team’s unique schedule. This helps ensure scrum daily meetings are an effective tool for your development team.
During my coaching sessions and my own experiences I have found there are several common mistakes made, which easily result in derailing the daily scrum meetings from the effective, productive short meeting they supposed to be, into long ineffective discussions. I have identified four common mistakes, which you should avoid.
Waiting around for your team
Always start your meeting at the set time, do not wait for team member, who are late. Those who miss it or who are late will feel guilty and try harder to make it to the next one.
Introducing new ideas
The scrum meeting is not a planning meeting. Introducing new topics will divert attention away from answering your strict carefully constructed three question agenda.
Letting people ramble
I know asking people to stop talking can be awkward and a difficult thing to do, however to keep the meeting in its time box, sometimes you will have to. In general, I would recommend to follow the rule, “everything you say should be valuable to everyone in the room”. This will keep rambling down. If this proves to be not enough and team members still go on and on, another simple solution is to set a strict time limit for each speaker.
Abandoning the team’s (informal) communication in favour of the daily stand up
Let’s be very clear. The scrum meeting should not be the sole means of team communication. It’s easy to wait around for the next meeting to bring up an issue, but this just slows down your team and blows up the daily stand-up meeting.