Daily Scrum: It’s not about what you can say, it’s about what you should say.
Yesterday morning my wife and I were preparing the last things before we left for our skiing trip. She had made a checklist and we quickly went through it, splitting what I would take care of and what she would take care of during the day, and whether there were any special things that were less self-explanatory than they looked at first sight. The whole thing took about 3 minutes.
Basically we held a Stand-up (let’s not be pedantic here, most people recognize this term so I’m using it here), looking at what we needed to do, whether there were possible problems and whether we needed help from each other somewhere, all to reach our goal: leave the house on time.
A Stand-up should be as simple as that, but in Scrum teams the reality sometimes seems to be so much more difficult: the whole backlog gets inspected, everything that was done yesterday gets discussed at length, as well as everything that hasn’t changed. At best it’s 15 minutes of “yesterday I did x, and today I’m going to continue with it, it’s in progress", at worst it takes much longer. Everything that can be said is being said.
The most important thing is to look at how you’re progressing on your goal
But at the end the most important question gets missed: how are we doing on our goal? Are things going as expected, or do we need to deviate?
And as supplemental questions: Are there any things we need to take special care of today to make sure that we progress as planned? Do we need each other for something, is someone stuck?
What you could do
If you recognize this anti-pattern, maybe make a switch to the following pattern:
- Start with inspecting the Sprint Goal. Are you on track as a team, are there new things learned, deviations necessary? If everything is going well, only say that. Don’t give an entire status update.
- Look at where you might give or get help. Is someone stuck, is there a pull request that needs reviewing? Discuss what you need from each other in the coming day. Make connections.
- Any other business.
You’ll be done quicker and have a more impactful meeting.
Good luck!
PS if you’re now thinking: we’re doing Daily Standups but we don’t have a goal to inspect, congratulations! You’ve identified a first improvement. If there’s no goal that you need to collaborate on, then why are you having a Daily Standup at all?
