Focus on empiricism and a plan for the next 24-hours instead of status reporting. Ensure the SM isn’t removing blockers, but instead helping the team to remove them. The Scrum Master doesn’t need to be at the Daily Scrum. They only need to ensure that this event occurs and the team members attend.
Under traditional methods of management teams will be familiar with status reports and status report meetings. These can take different forms such as traffic light statuses (e.g. red, orange, green).
This is not the objective of the Daily Scrum. Teams should work towards providing greater transparency in their work processes such that work status can be observed reliably at any time. Itshould not require the team to explicity state this. Obviously the status of work items may be discussed, but is for the purpose of making adjustments to the Sprint plan if required.
People tend to fall into habits, and Daily Scrums are no different. Adding variety and focusing on different aspects may lead to more effective events:
Liberating Structures’ 1-2-4-ALL pattern can be applied to the Daily Scrum:
Is there anything that will stop those actions occuring? Are those actions outside of the team’s control to influence? If so, have a conversation with the Scrum Master. They may need to escalate the issue to a manger.
The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness. The team can effectively conduct Daily Scrums without the Scrum Master if the team is mature enough (typically Stage 3). Ideally the team will self-manage in the absent of its Scrum Master and adjust accordingly.
2. Miller, T. (2021) Fix Your Boring Daily Scrums. https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/fix-your-boring-daily-scrums
