What’s the Daily Scrum?

The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute meeting for developers that takes place on a daily basis. According to the latest version of the Scrum Guide, the purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress towards the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog if necessary. Which basically means they make amendments to the planned work.

Who is the Daily Scrum for?

That’s the meeting for the guys producing an Increment – developers. However, Product Owner or Scrum Master are allowed to turn up if requested. Well, they always do if they have a developer’s role too. The Scrum Master role is to ensure the meeting takes place and it’s within the timebox. Although it cannot exceed 15 minutes, please keep in mind it might take 5, 10 or 12 minutes. To reduce complexity, the meeting should be held in the same place at the same time. Despite meeting being facilitated by the Scrum Master, it’s developers who should direct it. It would be best if the Scrum Master even didn’t host it. Of course, they are allowed to participate, but they should listen in. Hosting or running a Daily Scrum (which is even worse) doesn’t help the developers in self-organization.

It’s not about reporting the progress

The idea of the meeting is to synchronize the work of the team towards the Sprint Goal. This sometimes requires adjusting the Sprint Backlog items if necessary. In Scrum, scope isn’t fixed, as we inspect and adapt our work on a daily basis. This is another function of the Daily Scrum meeting. It’s a coordination meeting, and not problem-solving one! It’s only a quarter, because anything longer than that is considered a waste of time.

We inspect and adapt our work every day

Planning is very important in Scrum. Unlike traditional project management in which you will set a goal, and gather together months later, in Scrum you inspect and adapt every day. It’s also gets into risk management. Systematic Daily Scrum meetings are to minimize a bigger number of other meetings.

Communication booster

The Daily Scrum helps the team to communicate better. In fact, it’s a great opportunity for them to communicate where they are, what impediments they anticipate or are addressing, and what they are going to do about them.

Some misconceptions about the Daily Scrum

It’s a status meeting

It’s a meeting for the developers, so they don’t give their status updates to anyone from the management. It’s peer-to-peer. They collaborate together to do whatever in their power to get closer to the Sprint Goal.

Scrum Master runs it and assigns the tasks

The Scrum Master role is to facilitate the meeting, to explain the developers what the meeting is for, and what benefits they might get out of it. They don’t have to be there, yet if they are there, they simply listen in and observe.

Developers show their “reports”

It’s not the opportunity for the developers to address their reports to, say, the Product Owner. And again, it’s peer-to-peer.

Managers are forbidden to be at Daily

One of Scrum values is openness. It should guarantee that nothing is hidden. Although DS is in fact a meeting for developers to self-coordinate their work, it doesn’t mean nobody else can be there and listen in.

The main purpose is to answer the three questions

The developers taking turns answering the questions what they were doing the day before come to mind. They can do it and I think, albeit helpful it might get boring over time. They don’t have to repeat that structure though. How they conduct the Daily is ultimately up to them. The meeting takes no more than a quarter, which is very little time for every developer to elaborate on the questions. It’s a really short discussion about the progress and adaptations needed.

We can’t have any extra meetings

One of another reasons why the Daily Scrum happens on a daily basis is to reduce the need for other meetings. Seeing each other everyday might reduce our time wasted on other meetings. Nonetheless, it’s not forbidden for the Scrum Team to meet more often if need be. It happens that the Scrum Team has an after party after the Daily meeting.

Summary

The Daily Scrum indicates if we’re a real team or not. It’s the opportunity to briefly discuss where we are as a team, what impediments we encounter, and what to change (if necessary) to get closer to the Sprint Goal.