Chapter 12
Reclaiming the Daily Scrum

Every Scrum team has struggled with the daily scrum—it’s the subject of endless misunderstanding. The daily scrum is a chance for the development team to plan how they are going to work together to make progress toward their sprint goal over the next 24 hours. In short, it’s a collaborative planning session with a 15-minute time box. But in reality, it’s often treated as a status meeting and/or an opportunity to solve problems. For example, have you ever witnessed a daily scrum like this?

Scrum Master:

Alright, Ben, you go first. Anything to report?

Ben:

Nope! Still working on ticket number 2831. Made some progress, and should know more tomorrow.

Scrum Master:

Ben, that’s three days in a row. Hopefully today is a good day. Okay, John, you’re up. How’s your task going?

John:

Finished it late last night. Ready to take another task.

Emma:

Hey John, that check-in broke the build and I haven’t been able to deploy all morning.

Manager:

That’s the fourth time this month, John. Let’s talk about this during our next one-on-one.

Scrum Master:

Alright, let’s table this issue for now. We have nine more people to hear from.

By that point, most of the other team members have checked out, and who could blame them? This disaster of a meeting could go on for another 30 minutes. How likely is it that John will share anything important during this or any future daily scrum? Could Emma have offered help instead of just voicing criticism? Why is the manager participating? Why are the developers giving status reports to the Scrum master? We will explore these anti-patterns throughout the chapter, but first, why is the daily scrum a valuable event?

The daily scrum is one of the most reliable indicators of the health of the Scrum team. If you know what to look for, you’ll see that a development team reveals quite a bit about itself during the daily scrum. Watching a daily scrum closely could tell you enough to answer these questions:

• Is this a self-organizing team?

• Does the team collaborate on work?

• Does the team have a sense of shared accountability and ownership of their work?

• Is the development team focused on outcomes (the sprint goal) or on individual tasks?

• Is this an empowered team that owns its sprint backlog?

When executed well, the daily scrum is a great way to get the members of your Scrum team aligned with each other, inspect progress toward your sprint goal, and create a collaborative plan for the next 24 hours. It gives the development team an opportunity to make small decisions quickly. While inspecting their progress, team members can raise concerns, ask for help, and share what they’ve learned about the work over the past 24 hours. By embracing this level of transparency, the development team enhances its communication and collaboration.

But it’s amazing how many different ways this 15-minute event can go wrong. If your daily scrum is a wreck, you’re at risk. Your team’s work isn’t transparent, the team doesn’t have a daily plan for achieving the sprint goal, and it’s easy for the team to end up off course.

In this chapter we’ll examine daily scrum anti-patterns that rob your team members of their ability to truly self-organize and plan their days. We’ll suggest ways to reclaim the daily scrum and improve the overall health of your Scrum team.