The Daily Scrum is more than standing around

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3 min

How do we ensure that the team solves problems as a team? A team is more than a group of individuals and solving problems is more than individuals doing their own part. Coming together as a team is part of what Takeuchi and Nonaka call “self-transcendence”.

One key part of this is to ensure that teams remain stable. In Agile planning we pass work to a stable team. We can control and guide the work by using backlog. This differs from a classical project approach where we set a goal first and then form a transient team to address that goal.

The stability of the team, coupled with the small size, helps to reinforce the shared focus. This in turn allows the team to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and build trust. Trust and understanding allow a team to work together as a self-managing team. This in turn increases speed and quality and reduces the chance of failure.

73% of the incidents in its database occurred on a crew’s first day of flying together
National Transportation Safety Board

The Daily Scrum

How do we ensure that the team are working as a team towards a goal? Scrum introduces a mechanism called the “Daily Scrum”. This builds on the analogy of the Scrum (for those unfamiliar with rugby, a tightly bound group who are moving together). The “Daily Scrum” is an opportunity for the team to get together and integrate as a team. Other terms are available – personally I like “Huddle” after the sporting term. You will also hear this referred to as a “Standup”.

Developers frequently work on problems on their own for much of the day. It is easy for the team to fragment as a result and work as individuals. In Scrum, the team get together once a day for a short meeting. This is usually a fixed time at the start of the day and it is important that the whole team attends. We are trying to build team coherence, so there should be no sub-teams or excluding any members of the team.

The Daily Scrum is much misunderstood. Many organizations try to fit it into a traditional project framework. With this mindset it looks a bit like a reporting meeting, so people expect a project progress update. This is not the intent. The Daily Scrum is run by the team and looks at how the team can best move forwards towards their shared goal. There is no “management” involved to report to. Tracking may be a part of the meeting to help the team visualise progress towards the goal.

Every day the team should be checking in together as a team. The event is kept short, no more than fifteen minutes. If issues are raised they can be solved outside the meeting with the relevant people. Follow on meetings rarely need the whole team.

Good practices

As a leader you want to make sure the team maintains coherence and focus. A key tool is for each team to check in together as a complete team.

Going round the team saying what each person is doing tends to focus on them as individuals. Or worse still makes the meeting like a report. A better approach is to look at all the work currently in flight. What have we said we will do? How does the current work advance that? Is it moving smoothly or is there a need for help? Is there an agreed shared objective? What work is finishing and can people help close it? What work will be starting next and who will be picking it up?

A Daily Scrum includes Product Owners as well as developers. They also have a stake in the team goals and a strong input into these. The Daily Scrum is an artefact of Scrum, rather than part of wider Agile. However, the Agile Manifesto does make the point about the importance of continuous alignment of product and development during the work.