Agile Suggestions (S1E#2) -
Daily Scrum

Agile Suggestions (S1E#2) - Daily Scrum

by Dirk Depré - February 19, 2024

As as team, come together, discuss how the next 24 hours can become successful, it's a simply yet very effective way of planning your day. Daily scrums are nothing new. If you want to get things done, come together (either sitting down or standing up), talk about the goals and action you've planned for the day, help each other when somebody is stuck and check whether actions are in line with the bigger goals you want or need to achieve as a team. Simple as that!  Who better than the people doing the work can provide the input to make the collaboration go as effective as possible. That means: looking at something with 2 pair of eyes in stead of one, take work away from someone so he or she could get better focus, make time to explain something to somebody else, ... 

Let is be clear, the daily scrum is not about status updates. It's ALL ABOUT FLOW.  It's about becoming or being proactive, tackle the possible hiccups and roadblock before they appear, act before shit hits the fan.  That short and concise team huddle brings back focus in the team: discussing the relevant stuff; it's all about progress and planning to eventually being able to move forward. Be aware of the "powerfull one" in the discussion, the one deciding it all for others.  Stop starting, start finishing: a good practice is to run the board back to front to enable to pull the work to done. Aim for flow but be effective first! 

What is the literature saying about the daily scrum: 

"The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work."

Comment: the last 24 hours has provided new insights and they can influence how you bring value to life more easily or better or faster or in a different way.

"The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team. To reduce complexity, it is held at the same time and place every working day of the Sprint. If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers."

Comment: Having this planned in, enables people to say "no" to other meetings and prioritising this team collaboration session. Since the team focusses on the delivery of work items related to the sprint goals, the conversation is about what the team is going to do to make the next 24 hours as effective as can be: helping each other, tackling relentlessly an impediment, getting work to done, peer reviewing, pairing up, ... 

"The Developers can select whatever structure and techniques they want, as long as their Daily Scrum focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal and produces an  actionable plan for the next day of work. This creates focus and improves self-management."

Comment: It's a key inspect and adapt meeting. Get the necessary and essential information in, understand what is going on, get the visibility on the progress . Inspect by checking in on the work at hand. If needed, adapt the plan of action to actually deliver that goal of the sprint, actually change or adjust the tactical direction if needed. 

"Daily Scrums improve communications, identify impediments, promote quick decision-making, and consequently eliminate the need for other meetings."

Comment: Discuss, plan and move forward and have just a really effective and efficient use of your time.  

"The Daily Scrum is not the only time Developers are allowed to adjust their plan. They often meet throughout the day for more detailed discussions about adapting or re-planning the rest of the Sprint’s work."

Comment: "Shall we take that discussion off-line because we can tackle this with the two of us." Not everyone needs to have the full detail of a problem tackled by others. Sharing the problem high level, asking for and receive support. Meet after the daily scrum with a limited audience to tackle a certain issue collaboratively and more in depth. And if you really need help throughout the day, just ask. People like to help each other, that really is our human nature.