You're probably doing your daily scrums wrong.
If you're asking each team member to give an update on their progress, plans, and problems, there is a better way.
Hi, I'm Mike Cohn, the author of three best-selling books on Agile and Scrum.
I help teams succeed with Agil.
And I want to help you too.
Today I am going to tell you how to get team members more engaged in their daily scrums, how to learn more about each other's work,
and how more easily to notice if a product backlog item is going off the rails and needs attention.
Most daily scrums are conducted person by person, often still with the three traditional but no longer required questions of the daily Scrum.
What they did yesterday, what they'll do today, or what if anything is in the way.
After each person gives their update, the next person give their full update.
This is a very natural way to do a meeting.
One by one each says what they have to say.
A problem with this approach is that each speaks only once.
After I give my update I'm done.
I may not say anything else the entire rest of the meeting, In fact, a rule of no problem solving during the daily scrum encourages me to remain silent
after giving my update.
There's no rule that says you have to do it this way.
For most teams, I found a better approach is to go backlog item by backlog.
The scrumm master, or whoever is facilitating the meeting, calls out a first product backlog and asks who worked on this item yesterday.
Anyone who did states what they did yesterday, The facilitator then says, great, and who will work on it today?
Anyone who plans to work in that item today shares what they plan to accomplish.
Finally, the scrum master or facilitators asks, is anything holding anyone back on this item?
Team members answer, then the facilitater repeats this process on the next product backlog item.
I want to highlight a couple of benefits to this approach.
First, team members are likely to talk more than once.
Suppose I'm heavily involved in one product backlog item, but also doing a few little things on a second item.
I will talk twice during the meeting as each item is discussed.
In the traditional person-by-person approach, I would give the same update, But I do it all at once Second, it's much easier to understand which backlog
items are being worked on.
Imagine a team that has brought 10 items into their sprint.
The team should be working on perhaps two to four of those at any time.
If you run the meeting item by item and team members give updates on all 10 item in the sprint, that's a problem.
It's too much work in process.
Doing the meeting item by item makes this much more obvious than if you do the meaning person by person.
Third, it's easier to gauge what work will be completed in the sprint.
If three or four people each give an update on a given item, that item will probably be finished in this sprint, or at least the team is trying to finish it.
On the other hand, if no one mentions a particular item and you're nearing the end of the Sprint, you can start to think that one item won't be finish.
Fourth, the number of people who talk about any item indicates the degree to which team members are collaborating.
If only one team member comments on each item, there isn't a lot of collaboration occurring.
This can help the Scrum Master notice a problem sooner.
I think doing daily Scrum meetings person by person is a legacy of the old status meetings many team members will have participated in during their pre-Agile days.
In those meetings, a manager would ask each person to provide an update.
And so when teams move to Agile, they start by doing Daily Scums the same way.
It's a natural way to do the meeting.
And it can be very efficient.
Each person can provide their complete update all at once.
So for some teams, going person by person may be best.
But in my experience, a lot of teams benefit from going item by item.
I suggest mixing it up.
Do this sprint item-by-item, then next sprint person- by-person.
See how it goes.
You might find one approach is best for you.
Or you might find it's good to keep Daily Scrums fresh by changing the approach now and then.
How do you conduct Daily Scrums?
Is it one of these approaches?
Let me know in the comments how you do Daily scrums and what you think is best.
I read and appreciate every comment.
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