Daily Scrum

The daily scrum meetings are a critical part of the communication within a team. Do not assume that a quick checkpoint meeting is exempt from process improvements. There are many issues that can arise during the daily scrums that indicate process problems that should be addressed. For example:

• Team members routinely come late or do now show up at all.

  This behavior inhibits the open communication between team members and affects the responsiveness of the team.

• Teams opt to reduce the number of daily standups each week.

  Instead of meeting daily, they choose to meet 1-3 days a week. Although it is easy to think that the team would benefit from cutting down on the daily scrum to focus more time on coding, cutting down the team communication opportunities does not make the team more productive. It makes them significantly less productive.

• The daily standups are taking 30 minutes or more a day.

  The daily standup is designed as a quick meeting to discuss what you did yesterday, what you are going to do today, and if you have any blockers. If meetings are lasting much more than 5-10 minutes, it is likely that you are getting into design discussions that should be taking place outside of standup.

• Team members are working on their computers and not listening to their teammates.

  Whether you insist that your team actually standup during the daily standup or not, the only person that should be working on an electronic device is the person displaying the digital scrum board. If you use sticky notes on a whiteboard rather than a digital scrum board, then there is no reason for anyone to be on a computer or phone.

Failure to use the daily scrum meetings to report on status and issues can impact the team’s ability to deliver features on schedule.