Coach’s Corner

If your Daily Scrum doesn’t suffer from any of the major anti-patterns we discussed in this chapter, but you still feel like it could be more productive, here are a few things that you can try during your next daily scrum:

1. At the beginning of your next daily scrum, take a few minutes to remind the team of its purpose.

2. Remove yourself from the circle of development team members to put focus on the sprint goal and to help avoid the daily scrum devolving to a status meeting.

3. If you need to participate during the daily scrum—especially with new teams—try to limit yourself to open-ended questions that promote transparency, encourage inspecting the sprint goal, and promote adaptation by creating a new plan for the day.

4. Skip attending the daily scrum every once in a while and see what happens. Hopefully, the development team will still hold the event, align on their work, and develop a plan for the day that helps them achieve the sprint goal.

5. If people other than development team members participate in the daily scrum, ask them to stop and practice their active listening skills. The daily scrum is for the development team.

6. Coach the development team to own the daily scrum by setting the time, setting the place, and deciding how best to measure their progress toward the sprint goal. Remind the development team that they own the team board, the sprint backlog, and how they monitor their progress. Encourage them to keep their progress transparent.

7. Remind your team to be open to receiving help. We all get stuck. Don’t stay stuck. Be courageous. Their teammates are there to help each other.

In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at the done product increment. Delivering an increment of product is why we’re all here—it’s the purpose of Scrum. But if you ask most Scrum team members what a done increment is, they struggle. We’ll help clear up this confusion so your team can be confident that they’re on the right track.