How to Avoid Meaningless Daily Scrums
Originally published in GoRetro
Originally published in GoRetro
Mechanical meetings will lead to nothing but progress.
What’s the point in having a Daily Scrum with your team? Although you may think it’s about answering three questions and clarifying what is going on, this understanding is wrong. Please stick with me. Imagine the following, every day at 09:15 am; every team member answers the following:
What did I do yesterday?
What am I going to do today?
Do I have any impediments?
After everyone replies to these questions, what does it happen? Each developer probably leaves the call or the room and goes back to work. Nobody benefits from the daily. No one helps any team member because they are not acting as a team. Everyone has their Sprint. “I did this, and I will do that, and I have no impediment. Next one, please.”
I thought the Scrum team was supposed to have a shared goal and collaborate to reach that instead of everyone running in a different direction.
If you look at the Scrum Guide, 2020, you get the following definition for the Daily Scrum:
The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work.
The question is, why does nobody talk about the Sprint Goal in the Daily Scrum? Because most teams don’t have one or because they are missing the mark. During this post, I will share what leads to a meaningless daily and how to escape from it.
Product Owners Can Spoil Everything
Should Product Owners attend to the Daily Scrum? I guess many developers would say, “No, please!” Unfortunately, Product Owners often cause trouble during the Daily Scrum instead of being helpful.
Although the Daily Scrum is an event for developers, Product Owners can attend it and add value to the collaboration. I’ve come across some common problems caused by the Product Owner during the Daily Scrum:
The Boss: the meeting doesn’t start until the Product Owner is available. Developers cannot decide what to work on because the Product Owner defines who should do what.
Status Report: developers report what they did yesterday and what they are doing today to the Product Owner. They hope to make the right calls. Otherwise, the Product Owner will call them out.
New Requests: The Product Owner brings new requests during the Daily Scrum even though they have no relation to the Sprint Goal.
The Daily Scrum lasts fifteen minutes, but the damage caused by some Product Owners can last months.
Product Owners are part of the Scrum team and not on top of them. Scrum has no hierarchy; everyone contributes to reaching the same Sprint Goal.
As a Product Owner, I like being available for the developers. Showing up every day to the Daily Scrum is a way of doing that. Although the Daily Scrum is an event for the developers, Product Owners can attend it and add value.
Once Product Owners understand they are part of the Scrum Team, it becomes easier to attend the Daily Scrum to help. In my opinion, during the Daily Scrum, Product Owners should:
Listen to the developers mindfully.
Help if someone asks for it.
Avoid influencing the developers’ daily work plan.
Trust developers.
Avoid using the daily to micro-manage the developers.
Mechanical Daily Scrum
It’s 09:11 am. Björn had just woken up, and he says, “Shit! I have the boring daily in 04 minutes, and I’m starving.” He runs to the kitchen, drinks a glass of water, puts a capsule in his coffee machine, and waits. After a couple of seconds, the coffee is ready; he takes it and runs to his working room. He turns on his computer in a hurry.
Surprisingly, his laptop starts a mandatory update. Björn is late and getting nervous. Quickly, he picks up his phone. Pow! By chance, he bumps into his cup and spills coffee everywhere!
It’s 09:17, Björn jumps into the Daily Scrum call from his phone and immediately puts the camera off.
Harold: “Good mooooorning, Björn. We were waiting for you. I guess you slept longer.”
Björn: “Sorry, guys! I had some small issues, but now I am here. Shall we start?”
At this moment, Björn muted his phone, ran to the toilet, and took some toilet paper to clean the mess he had done. He is doing nothing but listening to the team members.
Harold: “Yes, let me start. Yesterday, I fixed the issue with the price API, and today I intend to deploy the changes and pick something else. Go, Ragnar.”
Ragnar: “Good morning, everyone. Yesterday, I didn’t do a lot. Today, I intend to continue working on the recommendation engine and potentially send it for code review. Go, Björn.”
Björn is still cleaning up his table as there’s coffee on his keyboard and notes.
Ragnar: “Björn, if you’re speaking, we don’t hear you. Please, unmute yourself.”
Björn: “Sorry, guys. I was cleaning something here. Yesterday, I did more or less the same things. I did some code reviews and made progress on my activities. Today I intend to conclude stuff and move on.”
Floki (Scrum Master): “Thanks to everyone for sharing. Nobody has any impediment, and you progressed on your activities, so I assume we’re good to go. Unless you tell me otherwise, let’s wrap up the call.”
The call finished at 09:27, and nobody knew what the benefit of it was. Björn didn’t hear anything anyone said. Meanwhile, Harold and Ragnar worked on unrelated activities and didn’t care about each other updates. Although they have a Sprint Goal, nobody remembered it, not even the Scrum Master.
The Jorvik team starts their working hours with a waste day by day. Yet, they accept the pointless daily, and nobody cares.
Does this scenario ring a bell to you? Have you ever experienced anything similar to it? Sadly, I’ve been in this scenario more often than I’d like to. Many teams still don’t function as a team but as a group of people running in different directions. When that’s the case, the Daily Scrum is nothing but helpful. The common anti-patterns I notice are the following:
Nobody talks about the Sprint Goal: each team member follows their agenda. Everyone focuses on finishing their Sprint. The Scrum Team may have a Sprint Goal but either doesn’t provide guidance, or nobody cares about it.
Answering questions: the mechanical Daily Scrum happens when developers focus on answering standard questions. It’s a kind of status report to the team, but the problem is that nobody listens to it. And after the daily, everyone follows a different direction.
No feedback: nobody is brave to call others out. The team lives in a false harmony. For example, during the first Sprint day, a developer says, “I will finish this task today, and send it for review by the end of the day.” and then on the second and third day, the developer says the same, the task is unfinished, and nobody calls him out or offer help.
It shouldn’t be like that. A meaningful Daily Scrum should review issues, and the team members should react to address them and increase the odds of reaching the Sprint Goal.
“Scrum is like your mother-in-law, it points out ALL your faults.” — Ken Schwaber
The Successful Daily Scrum
Daily Scrums will suck if they are mechanical. Nobody wants to be in a meeting where you don’t understand its benefit. Yet, I perceive the Daily Scrum as critical to teams’ success, but it needs to be vivid and not a meeting everyone wants to avoid.
A meaningful Daily Scrum will help the team get closer to the Sprint Goal. Instead of exchanging what each team member did, I encourage teams to focus on the Sprint Goal. The exchange is supposed to be dynamic instead of mechanical. Every team member should share what they are doing to get closer to the Sprint Goal and if they need help with it.
By the end of the Daily Scrum, the team should have clarity on collaborating to get closer to the Sprint Goal. Often, team members have to change their plans to support each other and ensure their efforts contribute to the Sprint Goal instead of individual goals.
The result of a meaningful Daily Scrum is confidence to reach the Sprint Goal instead of clarity on what everyone is doing. Scrum teams are self-managing and not micro-managing.
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