The 5 Common Daily Scrum Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make At Your Next Stand-Up
1. This is NOT a status meeting
If you’re new to Scrum events, this is an easy (and common) mistake to make.
The Daily Scrum meeting is NOT a status meeting. So, avoid trying to solve problems by the team during the previous day’s sprint.
It’s important to keep the time limit of a daily Scrum in mind. The time is set to 15 minutes.
Respect the time of your teammates, and save the problem solving until after the meeting is over.
2. Do NOT use this as a planning meeting
Another don’t of the Daily Scrum is to use the time as a planning meeting.
Why not? Once the team goes down that road, the team members won’t get a chance to share his or her updates.
Instead, the team should stick to the purpose of the Daily Scrum, which is to inspect the progress made towards the Sprint Goal, and make any adjustments to the team’s plan to complete the work forecasted in the Sprint Backlog.
If a new requirement urgently needs to be discussed, one approach might be to arrange a 15-minute meeting just after the Daily Scrum and include the development team and product owner. Then and there you can discuss the requirement, its priority, etc.
3. Do NOT only focus on the Scrum master
There’s a misconception that Daily Scrum has to be solely facilitated by the Scrum Master.
However, the role of the Scrum Master has a responsibility to ensure that the Daily Scrum occurs.
While the Scrum Master should ensure that the Daily Scrum occurs, that does not mean he/she owns the event.
Additionally, it doesn’t mean that the team has to “report” to the Scrum Master. The Daily Scrum event is designed for the team.
4. Do NOT micromanage the team
If you are a Scrum Master, it’s important that you avoid issuing instructions to the team members. Additionally, don’t use the time to start planning how the team members should carry out a particular development activity.
Why? Because the Scrum process advocates self-management and self-organization.
Development team members should be encouraged to realize their responsibilities, working together to collaborate to solve process related issues.
To encourage self organization, the Scrum Master and Product Owner shouldn’t micro-manage the team and their activities.
5. Do NOT waste time by asking the wrong questions
For those new to the Daily Scrum, the team can start by adopting three question framework.
These questions include:
- What was done the day before?
- What is proposed to be done today?
- Did the team face any problems or impediments?
The meeting should always try to embody the spirit of these three questions because the answers form the basis of the information that a team needs to assess their progress in the sprint.
How do you approach your daily Scrum meetings? How do you assess the success of your Scrum? Tell us what you’ve learned over time and what’s on your Scrum Cheat Sheet in the comments!
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