The daily scrum is likely the most misunderstood event in Scrum. The short 15-minute daily scrum meeting can be either the fuel that drives a team’s collaboration each day or the bane of the developer’s daily existence.
Taking a back seat is one of the most important things a Scrum Master can do to help their team get the most from this event. All too often Scrum Masters become the center of attention during daily scrums, which can lead to a whole host of dysfunctions. The Scrum Guide says this activity is “for the developers,” so it’s important that Scrum Masters coach their teams into taking ownership of this activity as soon as possible.
Daily Scrums Should Run More Like Parties
Imagine you’ve invited friends over for tacos and drinks. No one is going to run this little party. No one is controlling each conversation, where people stand, or how much guacamole someone eats.
The party runs itself.
The daily meetings of high-performing agile teams should run themselves as well.
Although that may sound easy, it’s not. Many subtle decisions you make along the way will point a team toward ownership of this event or let them fall back knowing that you are in charge instead.
New Teams Need More Help
In the beginning, Scrum Masters will need to coach their teams to reach a point in their maturity where the team can function independently at daily scrums. If a team is new to agile, it’s fine for someone—usually the Scrum Master or coach—to run the meeting.
Teams also will likely need help setting up their rules and norms. These might be that the meeting never takes longer than 15 minutes, that lengthy problem-solving is done after the meeting, and that the meeting happens at 10 AM online. Similarly, most teams establish a pattern of discussing progress, plans, and problems—the 3 Ps.
And for new teams, it's perfectly normal for the Scrum Master to call on people and instruct them to provide an update on their progress since the last meeting, their plan through the next meeting, and any problems their facing.
After all, new team members won’t know what to discuss in a daily meeting until they’ve had this explained and have experienced a few meetings. But team members will quickly figure it out, and when they do, it's time to coach them off of a Scrum Master-run meeting.
Three Things to Stop Doing So Teams Can Take Over
The best agile teams sync up successfully without someone running the daily meeting, much like having friends over for tacos. The meeting is not run by a Scrum Master, coach, product owner, manager, or anyone else. To get a team to the point where they are fully running the meeting themselves, successively stop doing three things.
- Stop asking questions
When the Scrum Master asks the questions, it naturally makes the Scrum Master the audience for the answer. Teams need to understand that daily scrums are not status reports to the Scrum Master. They are meetings for the team to plan with one another.
So the first thing to do is stop asking questions like, what progress did you make yesterday? or what is your plan for today? If a team member forgets to answer one of the team’s agreed-upon questions during their turn, just that one question of the person. - Stop calling on people
After perhaps a week like this, stop calling on people, too. Leave it up to the team members to figure out who goes next. You might call the meeting to order: “OK, it’s 10 o’clock. Let’s get started.” And then wait for someone to get things rolling.
If someone asks who should go first, tell them that’s up to them. They can go alphabetically, east to west geographically, randomly, or however they choose.
Too many Scrum Masters continue to call on people to speak next in the daily scrum, long after the team is ready to figure it out for themselves. When this happens, the developers wait for their turn until called upon. Crosstalk is limited, as is true collaboration.
The subtle act of simply calling on people can imply authority and might therefore lead to a misunderstanding that the Scrum Master owns this meeting and benefits from it.
If a developer still provides their update to you, even if you didn't initiate the question or call on them, be ready to redirect them back to the other developers. When in person, this might look like staring at your shoes and refusing to make eye contact. You might also try placing the rest of the team in a circle while you stand outside it.
When remote, try turning off your camera when that person is speaking, to help them get the message. Remote or in person, you might even arrange an “emergency that needs your attention,” giving you an excuse to duck out of the meeting. Anything to help the rest of the team understand that they need to be talking to each other, not at you. - Stop Starting Meetings
The next step is to stop starting the meeting. Instead of saying, “It’s 10 o’clock, let’s get started,” wait for someone else to do that.
Normally if people are used to you calling the meeting to order, they’ll just stare at you until you do. So you’ll probably need to tell them the first couple of times that it’s their meeting and they can decide when to get it started.
The sooner you can turn over control to the developers, the better. Encourage them to experiment with the format and try new things. If daily scrums aren't working to engage the team, the team might consider breaking out of the person-by-person approach to daily scrums. They can experiment with a story-by-story approach to daily scrums instead.
Your team has to find out what works best for them—it may be different from any other team. Show them what self-organization looks like and give them the power to take full control of their event.
Test Yourself
Here’s a challenge: Imagine someone is observing your daily meeting. From just that meeting would they know who is the Scrum Master, coach, or team lead? They shouldn’t. (Want an expert insight into your agile practices? Consider bringing us in for a Meetings Observation and Recommendations workshop. It's a small investment that can yield big results.)
It's true that Scrum Masters should guide teams through their early daily scrums. Later, they'll help when team members talk too much. Or when team members won't talk at all. But as time goes by, Scrum Masters, coaches, and team leads should turn more and more of it over to the team themselves.
Team-led daily scrums are a unique opportunity to nurture a team’s self-organization while simultaneously helping the team to get the most out of this event every day.
Your teams may not even know to thank you for it...and that’s OK.
Last update: November 6th, 2025
