The Daily Scrum

I have found that the value of the daily scrum can become lost in teams very easily. The notion of check-ins and talking through blockers is an anti-pattern to being agile, instead the team should be collaborating and being made aware of any issues in real-time.

The Value

The focus of a team working within sprints should always be on the sprint goal/s and the Daily Scrum is a great chance to align with what that is as well as deciding what the direction of the engineers’ day is.

Involvement

The meeting should be small and concise and only consisting of the small team that work day to day. No outside involvement / derailment..

While the engineers should all be aware of what each other are working on, there are is a lot of invisible work that goes during pair programming and side conversations, these scrum sessions are a good chance for the individuals to give clarity and context to others that weren’t privy.

Dos

Do have a casual chat with the team.
Do catch-up absentees.
Do focus on the sprint goal/s.
Do drive the agenda & priority for the day ahead for engineers.
Do make invisible work visible.
Do use the session for syncronisation.
Do allow for course correction, if the sprint goal is no longer aligned with the teams goals, pivot!

Donts

Dont wait for the session to inform the team of blockers.
Dont accept outside of team involvement.
Dont follow a script.
Dont hijack the meeting for progress updates.