Do your Daily Scrums often exceed the time-box or end up in a deep technical discussion only relevant to few team members? In this post, I will put down some practical ideas on how to have a more efficient Daily Scrum meeting.
What is the Daily Scrum?
As stated in the Scrum guide, the Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team. The Daily Scrum occurs every day of the Sprint. The Team will inspect the work done since the last Daily Scrum and forecast on the upcoming work. By doing so, the Development Team optimizes collaboration and performance.
Besides this, the Development Team inspects the progress towards the Sprint Goal and how this is trending towards completing the Sprint Backlog. Doing so shall result in an increased understanding of how the team will work together reaching the Sprint Goal. As a result, the probability of reaching the Sprint Goal will also increase.
Why a good and efficient Daily Scrum is important
So no we know what the Daily Scrum is, let’s have a look at why it is so important for the team. First of all, as stated above, the Daily Scrum is the moment where the Development team inspects its progress towards the Sprint Goal. Secondly, the Daily Scrum meeting will improve communications within the Development Team. In the third place, because this meeting is the meeting where the team arranges the work, there is less (or no) need for other meetings. Another key aspect of a good Daily Scrum is the identification of impediments for development. And last but not least, during the Daily Scrum important information is shared about progress and approach which will improve the level of knowledge of the whole Development Team.
A few practical ideas to make the Daily Scrum more efficient
So, then what can you as a Scrum Master do to make the Daily Scrum more efficient? A few practical ideas are listed below.
Put items on the Parking Lot
It is not seldom the case that during the Daily Scrum topics arise that require a more in-depth discussion. And often those discussions are not a concern to the whole Development Team. Besides that is also pretty normal for people to tend to have those discussions straight away, on the spot.
Yes, the discussion must be held.
And, no, the Daily Scrum is not the correct place for these discussions.
A good practice to keep the Daily Scrum focussed and concise is to use a Parking Lot. Topics that arise and require discussion, but no during the Daily Scrum, can be placed on the parking lot. The items on the parking lot can then be discussed after the Daily Scrum by the team members for which it is relevant.
Bring ELMO into the room
Another approach to preventing the Daily Scrum from being hijacked by non-relevant discussions is to bring ELMO into the room. No, I don’t mean the puppet from Sesame Street. ELMO is the abbreviation for “Enough Let’s Move On”.
Whenever team members start a discussion that should not be held in the Daily Scrum any other team member can pull-off an ELMO. Often this is done by raising your hand and remain silent. Any other team member who spots ELMO being played should also play ELMO. This will result that after a few moments, most of the team will have played ELMO. The few persons having a discussion will highly likely automatically stop their discussion. After this, the meeting can continue in the way it should.
Use a talking token
Believe me, your team is not the first where Daily Scrums end up in discussions where all team members are talking at the same time. To bring a little more discipline in the meeting you can introduce a talking token. This token can be literally anything that you can hold in your hand (maybe bring your own team’s mascotte). During the Daily Scrum the person who holds the token, and only that person, is allowed to talk. When finished talking he/she can pass on the token to the next team member.
Focus on meeting the Sprint Goal
The intention of the Daily Scrum is to inspect the Sprint Plan and verify if this plan is still valid, simple as that. To be able to do so, the Development Team requires information on the progress towards the Sprint Goal to be available in the meeting. The Scrum Guide provides a bit of guidance on how this can be achieved. This is better known as the three questions for the Daily Scrum:
- What did I do since the last Daily Scrum that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
- What will I do until the next Daily Scrum to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
- Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?
Yes, these questions do help teams get the required information out in the open. But often the Daily Scrum ends after answering these questions. As a result of this, the Daily Scrum becomes nothing more than a mere status update meeting.
So, instead of all team members answering these questions, I have tried the following in my Daily Scrums. During the meeting we inspect the status of the Sprint Backlog, we identify if there are any impediments on the work that we’re trying to deliver at the end of the Sprint. And then we answer the question:
Are we going to achieve the Sprint Goal?
Now, if the answer is a loud and clear “Yes”, we wrap up the meeting. Whilst at a negative response we find ourselves adapting to a new plan on how to still achieve the Sprint Goal.
This approach will not only focus on the more important thing of the Daily Scrum. It also steps away from individual status updates and leads to a better inspection of the team progress towards the Sprint Goal.
If everything fails…
You have tried everything you can as a Scrum Master, and the Daily Scrums still end up in technical deep-dives that last for hours? Then still there is no reason to panic as there is always one more thing you can do. Lately, I came across the “Daily Plank meeting“. In this approach, all Development Team members lay down on the floor during the Daily Scrum. Whenever you talk, you must keep a plank position. Guaranteed your Daily Scrum will be within the time-frame in no time!