Daily Scrum

Basic

difficulty

Stage 2

Agile IQ® Level

Planning

Practices

Scrum

Framework

Introduction

The Daily Scrum is a reoccurring event held at the same time every day for Developers to inspect their progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog so that it reflects the plan for the Scrum Team for the next 24 hours. This communication fosters shared responsibility as well as the ability to identify and more rapidly respond to any challenges and changes as they occur.

Timebox: 15 minutes at the same place and same time every day of the Sprint.

It's not a status report

The Daily Scrum isn't a status report to the Scrum Master. If anyone wants a status report about the work of the team they should look to the Sprint Backlog and/or the team's Scrum Board.

Daily Scrum ≠ Stand-up

The "Stand-up" Meeting is part of the Extreme Programming (XP) framework. Where XP's Stand-up focuses on software developer communication, collaboration, and even pairing, the Daily Scrum's purpose is empiricism.

Who should attend?

Developers only.

If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are doing work that contributes to the Sprint Goal, they’re considered ‘Developers’ and should also attend this event.

The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the event occurs and can facilitate the discussion if necessary.

This is not an opportunity for the Product Owner or manager to give an update to the team.

Don't use the "3 Questions"

Many teams use the outdated "3 questions" format for their Daily Scrum. Its line of questionning about "what did you do yesterday" devolves the conversation into a status report.

How do run an effective daily Scrum

Good questions to ask at the Daily Scrum:

Remind everyone of the Sprint Goal.
Assess progress toward the Sprint Goal. Is anything slowing us down from achieving the Sprint Goal? What are we going to do about that today?
Discuss what work is in-progress that the team should focus on today before they bring more work into the Sprint.
Ask whether the Sprint Plan needs adjusting based on what was learned in the past 24-hours.
Is anyone waiting on anything? This should be a priority for the team to sort out.

The Scrum Master doesn't remove impediments

The Scrum Master is there to help team members sort out their issues themselves. If there are issues that are blocking the team from achieving the Sprint Goal, the Scrum Master should act to help the team self-manage to address those issues for themselves. Only when the team can't sort out the issues for themselves should the Scrum Master then act to escalate it immediately to someone (e.g. a manager) for action.

Download

Download the Daily Scrum facilitation guide to print and use with your team.

References

1. Sutherland, J. and Schwaber, K. (2020). The Scrum Guide. The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game.

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