The making of a productive Daily Scrum
Through my experience in helping teams run productive Daily Scrums, I have gained valuable insights that I would like to share in this article.
Daily Scrum
Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work. — The Scrum Guide 2020
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity — Martin Luther King Jr
The three questions, “What did I do yesterday?”, “What am I going to do today?”, and “Are there any impediments?” are so deeply rooted that teams just blurt them out and try to get out.
One common anti-pattern that can have a significant impact is being unaware of how an ideal way of Daily Scrum execution can benefit the team. In some organizations, the Daily Scrum is still viewed primarily as a status update meeting, which can cause its true value to be overlooked.
For instance, during one of the meetups, a Scrum Master described a situation where the Product Owner was employed by the client. At the Daily Scrum, the Product Owner used the meeting to request progress updates, set deadlines, and make ad-hoc requests, which made the team feel restricted. The Scrum Master was hesitant to talk directly with the Product Owner, as it might have affected the client relationship negatively. To address this issue, the Scrum Master sought assistance from Agile Coaches, who reviewed the Daily Scrum and informed the Product Owner of how the current approach undermined the purpose of the meeting and diminished trust within the team.
How we significantly improved the efficiency of our Daily Scrum
What?
The Daily Scrum serves as a platform to review the team’s progress towards the Sprint Goal and make necessary adjustments to attain it. To achieve the desired increment, it is crucial that the team adopts a self-organizing approach. Based on my experience, teams tend to deliver optimal results when granted the autonomy to decide how they want to execute tasks, rather than micromanaging their every move. Furthermore, self-organization fosters an environment of trust amongst the team members, which is vital for successful execution. This approach entails assessing work-in-progress, dependencies, and impediments, and devising a comprehensive strategy to tackle any challenges that may arise.
Outcome: A consensus-based plan with clear actions for the next 24 hours towards achieving the Sprint Goal.
How?
Although the team possessed all essential information regarding the Sprint (hosted in Azure/JIRA) they expressed a desire for a visual representation of the entire journey, emphasizing critical adjustments that may need to be made along the way.
Therefore, we built a simple planner and named it “The Engineering Schedule”
Steps involved in making of “The Schedule”:
- During the first day of the Sprint, the team self-organizes and prepares the “Engineering Schedule” which outlines the plan for implementation and delivery to the QA team based on the user journey. Keep in mind that dates may change as the team progresses in the Sprint due to unforeseen circumstances.
a. The team self-organizes around the number of people working on a Story/Task/Spike, with parallel execution based on priority.
b. Individuals voluntarily take on specific responsibilities for stories or tasks, even though accountability lies with the entire development team.
c. Individuals then look at the overall work that needs to be done, discuss dependencies, and add a high-level date of development completion where QA can expect the work for verification.
d. Finally, the Engineering Schedule is plotted, and the team gathers to discuss the overall plan and have a confidence vote.
e. If there is low confidence, the team will rework the plan and vote again for better confidence.
Daily Scrum Execution Format
Steps 1: Before joining the Daily Scrum, it is expected that the team members are adequately prepared with the latest updates on their respective tasks. Additionally, before concluding their workday, the team members ensure that the Scrum Board is updated with the accurate status. This ensures that the team is kept up-to-date even in situations where a team member may be on PTO or experiencing an emergency.
Step 2: The team members ensure punctuality for the Scrum Event and follow a rotation calendar to facilitate Daily Scrum on the designated days.
Step 2: Every individual addresses the team, providing updates on their progress towards the schedule, highlighting any impediments, call for support, or deviations resulting from additional discovery or external influences.
Step 3: In the event of a delay in story completion, which is either caused by a delay in dependency delivery or other reasons, the engineering schedule is updated by pushing the dates. Every team member then assesses the possible impact for other deliverables, and checks for a possible mitigation. All of these activities are well-covered within 15 minutes.
Step 4: Immediately after the call, the team holds an in-depth meeting to discuss the mitigation plan and recalibrate the plan to ensure that the Sprint goal is achieved.
Impact
Tips to help improve the Daily Scrum
- Focus on the Critical Path.
Emphasizing the critical path means focusing on the Sprint Goal, immediate milestones (such as a scheduled mid-Sprint release consisting of previous Increments), dependencies/risks that are or may put the Sprint Goal at risk, followed by other items in the order of their priority. Consider asking the team, “If you only had 15 minutes to discuss the plan for the next 24 hours, what would you focus on?” Limiting the discussion to the Sprint Goal can keep the team on track. - Encourage the team to be fearless.
Encouraging the team to be open and direct in conversations is a key responsibility for Scrum Masters. By creating a fearless environment, team members can freely raise issues and concerns without fear of negative consequences.
An example of an employee benefiting from open communication in the Daily Scrum could be a team member who is struggling with a particular task. By sharing their struggles with the team, they can receive help and support from their colleagues to find a solution. This can lead to increased productivity and efficiency, as well as a sense of camaraderie and collaboration within the team.
Furthermore, open communication can help team members learn from one another and improve their skills. By sharing their successes and challenges, team members can gain insights into different approaches and techniques that can help them become more effective in their roles. This can also help foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement within the team.
Verdict
The Daily Scrum is a valuable opportunity for the team to engage in a daily inspection and adaptation process. As Scrum Masters, it is essential that we facilitate the team’s development of self-organization and understanding of the purpose behind each Scrum event to fully capitalize on its benefits.
Over the past few years, I have worked with several Scrum teams that were struggling to benefit from the Daily Scrum but did not attempt to correct it. For them, the Daily Scrum was all about answering the three questions: “What did I do yesterday?”, “What will I do today?”, and “Do I see any impediments?” and dispersing. When I questioned if they saw any advantage in the Daily Scrum, they were not sure. Maybe they had programmed themselves to follow, maybe they never felt the need to ask “why,” or maybe they felt comfortable with how it was. Therefore, when I proposed the solution of adopting the above scheduled approach, there was initially hesitation. However, they wanted to try because they accepted that the current model was definitely not helping them in any way. I was happy to see every team eventually realizing the advantages of this approach, which promoted self-organization and helped optimize the Daily Scrum event. These teams achieved success by actively listening, addressing anti-patterns, resolving impediments, and challenging conventional methods.
End Note
This article is dedicated to my respected mentor, Shubhang Vishwamitra, for his invaluable guidance and introduction to the various concepts mentioned above. Under his expert mentorship, I, along with many other Scrum Masters, have learned to question traditional approaches when dealing with real-world problems, thereby improving our decision-making skills and becoming more effective Scrum Masters.
To all the readers, I hope this article has been informative. I eagerly anticipate any valuable suggestions or feedback.
Do you want to write for Serious Scrum or seriously discuss Scrum?
