“Yesterday, I was in Sprint Planning…” I hear it once, and I’m suspicious. By the time the third team member says this, it’s clear the Daily Scrum I’m observing is broken. Everyone in the room knows we did planning yesterday—we were all there. It’s not valuable content to help the team plan its day.
Too many Daily Scrums are a waste of time. It’s not always this blatant, but if everyone knows what they’re going to say in advance of the meeting and nothing changes as a result of the meeting, that team is probably missing the point.
So, what is the point? A few days ago, I tweeted what I believe to be the purpose of the Daily Scrum:
Make sure your Daily Scrum answers, “How are we going to collaborate to deliver the most value today?”
— Richard Lawrence (@rslawrence) December 2, 2013
You probably won’t ask that question directly—the conversation would be too wide-ranging and unfocused—but the questions you do answer should lead to answering that larger question.
With the standard Daily Scrum facilitation approach, each person answers three questions in turn, “What did I do yesterday? What am I going to do today? What impediments are in my way?” This approach might answer the larger question, but it often doesn’t. Most of the time, it just looks like a status report.
There’s a better way. Start with the highest priority story on your board for the current sprint. Ask, “What happened to move this story closer to done yesterday?” The people who worked on it will answer. Next ask, “What impediments are keeping this story from getting done?” Again, the appropriate people will speak up. Finally ask, “What are we going to do to get this story done (or closer to done) today?” The people already working on it will probably jump in. Others, now knowing more about the state of the story and what’s needed to get it done, may also offer to contribute. Move to the next highest priority story and repeat. Continue until you reach stories that are not started and won’t be started today.
This approach gets the team focused on the most important stories first. It emphasizes collaborating to get things done over reporting individual status. And it treats yesterday’s progress and impediments as data to inform today’s plan, which the team generates together.
Sometimes, this approach misses topics worth talking about. To catch those, keep a Daily Scrum parking lot board. You can add topics to this board before or during the Daily Scrum. After you’ve gone through the stories, turn your attention to the parking lot. For each item, identify who needs to be involved in the discussion and when it’s going to happen. Occasionally, you might decide to address the item with the whole team right then (for example, if the Product Owner brought a new story that needs to be sized). Usually, though, these conversations can happen with a smaller group later in the day when it fits around the sprint work.
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