Consultant and Developer with leading Firms and SMEs, Abhinav Raj is proficient in leading technologies and Project management tools. Abhinav has also worked as a content developer for Edtech startups and B2B businesses.
In this article
Did you know that almost 86% of companies use the method of daily scrum meetings? Daily scrum meetings are a part of most companies to bridge the communication gap between the manager and the team. It also helps eliminate the role of any other meetings. A vital part of the daily agile routine and a fundamental part of the scrum framework is the daily scrum, commonly referred to as the daily stand-up meeting. It eventually enhances or hinder a development team's operation and efficacy. Agile training makes you accustomed to these meetings. Let us dive deep and understand more about Daily Scrum Meeting -
What is the Daily Scrum Meeting?
The daily scrum Meeting is a time-bounded 15 minutes meeting that allows the team to plan the next 24 hours. The meetings are usually held in the morning at the same time and in the same place every day. It allows the team to have relevant and brisk communication. The development team is undoubtedly at the heart of the daily scrum process. Product owners are welcome to attend, but only if the team requests it and asks them to share their expertise or offer suggestions. At a daily scrum meeting, product owners are not allowed to dominate the conversation. To advance your career in Agile, enroll in KnowledgeHut Agile training.
During daily scrum meetings, it should be possible to quickly view the sprint backlog and burndown chart. The scrum team may then direct the daily scrum meeting based on facts and developments that are obvious to everyone on the team.
The daily scrum meeting tries to support the scrum team's ability to self-organize and methodically identify roadblocks. The whole scrum team, the scrum master, and the scrum product owner are required to participate in daily scrum. Additional stakeholders are welcome to attend these meetings, but only as a spectator.
Purpose of Daily Scrum Meeting
The scrum meeting is a means for team members to keep each other updated about their tasks. It focuses on quick decisions, plans, problems, and progress. Besides, the main purpose of daily scrum meetings is to get a better understanding of the team on 4 parameters -
- A. What they did yesterday
- B. What are they going to do today
- C. If there is any obstacle
- D. If they need any assistance
It is a daily event for the team to communicate effectively and improve productivity of the team.
Each team member will participate in an update meeting with the team lead to discuss their progress on the assignment. A daily scrum must be carefully constrained so as not to consume all the time, but it will surely provide some indication of how each team member is progressing with their assigned tasks.
After reviewing all issues and obstacles to development, the team analyses its sprint progress to determine its performance. A traditional chart called a burndown chart illustrates progress by showing work that has been accomplished and work that still needs to be done.
The information in the graphic suggests that to accomplish the sprint target, plans may need to be modified. The group has an entirely independent organization.
Daily Scrum Meeting Participants
Usually, all team members working towards a similar goal are required to attend daily scrum meetings. The Scrum master and product owner are committed team members; hence, they are expected to attend and participate in the discussions. While a senior VP or manager can also attend the meeting, they can only listen to and process the information. Other team members are not allowed to participate in daily scrum meetings. However, here are some participants in the daily scrum meeting that drives the meeting and give their valuable input.
1. Scrum Master
A scrum master ensures that the meeting is bounded for 15 minutes, and all the important points are discussed for the day with each team member.
The scrum master, who serves as the scrum team's leader, must convene the daily scrum meeting each day, ensure that all team members are present, and lead it from beginning to end. The scrum master ensures that the discussion stays on topic and notes any challenges the team members are facing so that they may be overcome.
2. Participants in the Scrum Team
In our situation, this alludes to the experts that make up the scrum team and finish the tasks that develop the project.
The team members must be present to monitor their progress and make a commitment to finish the assignment by the deadline (for the day). The whole team is expected to attend the scrum meeting so that everyone is on the same page and can contribute to discussions, replanning, and adapting new changes.
3. Product Owner
The product owner, who is not a crucial member of the scrum team, may also be present and help the team prioritize tasks as needed and lead them through the backlog items they have chosen to work on. By ensuring that the scrum team completes the pertinent work at the proper time, he or she maximizes the value of the product on behalf of the end customers and/or other stakeholders.
The scrum product owner selects the product's release date as well as the software requirements required for a certain software version.
He/She stands for both functional and non-functional end-user expectations. As a result, the scrum product owner must coordinate closely with the scrum team and manage every aspect of the project. Nobody else has the authority to mandate the scrum team's pursuit of a different set of goals.
Daily Scrum Meeting Agenda
The agenda of the daily scrum meeting is to focus on three key areas such as what I accomplished yesterday, today’s plan, and if the team faced any concerns during the work. The daily scrum's objective is to evaluate the team's progress toward the sprint goal. Although most meetings have a set framework, this one does not:
The team members access their sprint boards to discuss the progress during a face-to-face or virtual meeting. Each team member provides a quick report on what has been accomplished and what is anticipated to occur next. If necessary, the sprint backlog can be modified.
Remember that this is a status meeting and that any issues that crop up during the daily scrum are often only resolved outside of it with the core team members. As a result, discussions can be more productive, and time can be saved.
Important Things to Discuss
Challenges
Do workers face any challenges that prevent them from finishing their work? Possible discussion areas include technical limitations, departmental and team dependencies, and personal limitations (like vacations booked, people out sick, etc.).
A sample scenario
How this appears:
Engineer: Setting up the backend for the new client software.
Marketing Manager: Our email provider was down yesterday. Make the newsletter draft right now instead.
Customer Success Manager: I am waiting to hear from a client about our new product so we can detail the team.
Account Executive: A brand-new sales sequence is almost complete. When the marketing materials are complete, I will add them to the flow and make them live.
Guidelines for Daily Stand-up Meeting
For the team to reap the rewards of this daily brief meeting, an effective daily stand-up meeting necessitates innovation and motivation. Most stand-up meetings, however, tend to run long and become disorganized, defeating the goal of the daily stand-up. Here are some practical recommendations for a successful daily stand-up meeting:
- The meeting should not be late, leave early, or be canceled. It should take place at designated locations and times. The benefit of doing this is that it enables everyone to develop a habit, which will make communication more effortless and natural.
- The so-called stand-up meeting, as the name implies, is held while standing; sitting or even lying down is not permitted. Standing up during a meeting can speed up and improve its efficiency, and it will undoubtedly last no longer than 15 minutes. This will likely take a long time if you are meeting in a particularly comfortable setting, which defeats the purpose of the meeting.
- Everyone should make a brief, acceptable statement about their employment situation without going into detail. Discussions about the specifics can take place offline. We simply focus on the status and issues raised during the meeting.
- It is a common misperception that team members always consider reporting their work to the scrum master during the daily stand-up meeting. That is not the situation. For everyone to understand your job, the status of your progress, or the need for support for others, everyone in the meeting takes turns speaking to each member of the team about the situation. It seeks to improve teamwork and communication across the board.
- Speaking is done one at a time, alternately, and once per individual. Others in the group should listen intently or pose questions when someone talks. By doing this, you can gain a better knowledge of how others are doing, which will allow you to work more efficiently and possibly even acquire assistance.
To track progress and create a springboard for user stories and tasks, you use automated scrum management software. This allows you to quickly see the sprint's status.
Standards for Scrum
The following tenets of scrum are supportive of the empirical component:
1. Transparency
Everyone on the team must be aware of the difficulties the other team members are experiencing for the team to function well. Teams reveal organisational issues that get in the way of their success, often issues that have been there for a while.
2. Inspection
Regular inspection points built into the framework provide the team an opportunity to assess how the procedure is proceeding. Two instances of these inspection locations are the daily scrum meeting and the sprint review meeting.
3. Adaptation
Every day, the staff reviews how things are makes any necessary revisions to anything that does not seem to make sense.
Daily Scrum meeting Best Practices
What then are the best strategies for successfully running your daily Scrum meetings?
1. Finish the Daily Scrum within the allotted time - To keep the crew on task and focused, a 15-minute time limit is frequently used. After all, team members simply need to respond to their three questions succinctly and successfully.
2. Have the meeting at the same time and location - The scrum ideals of dedication and focus will be fostered as a result, and this will offer a level of consistency and regularity.
3. Attend everyday Scrum meetings with the same team members - You incur the danger of disruptions if your cast is constantly changing. There will probably be some attendees who are missing background information from previous meetings and who need to be updated.
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Common Mistakes to Avoid in Daily Scrum Meetings
We are certain that scrum meetings are crucial meetings. But the stand-up meeting needs to be conducted appropriately to be successful. Ensure that your daily scrum meetings are as productive as possible by avoiding common blunders. The errors that teams make during their daily scrum sessions are listed below.
- Unpunctuality: A time-box of about 15 minutes is allotted for stand-up meetings. Team members should try to be on time and should be ready to share their work and any obstacles.
- Conversation Monopoly: When someone has the microphone, they should always stay on topic and not stray to the detriment of everyone else. Everyone must address the team at the conclusion and should keep to the time allotted to them.
- Confidentiality: Team members should be open and honest about any problems or obstacles they are running into. Additionally, participants should try to keep negative input to a minimum or handle it diplomatically.
Benefits of Daily Scrum Meetings
The daily scrum is not intended to be used as a status report or a management reporting tool. Team members' commitment and responsibility are demonstrated through their daily scrum practice. These meetings are run by the team, for the team. These meetings support self-organization and teamwork while also assisting the team in maintaining focus on its goal. The time spent in these sessions will have been well spent once the project's outcome is realized. Daily scrum meetings are highly helpful for agile teams focused on creating welcoming work environments, completing the sprint goal, and guaranteeing effective communication. Daily scrum meetings, when well scheduled, have the following advantages:
- Team members can share their progress toward the sprint target, and what they are working on today, and receive comments on whether they are progressing at a proper speed or not at daily Scrum sessions. Additionally, they can clearly comprehend what the other team members are working on, ensuring transparency and clarity throughout the sprint.
- Daily scrum meetings foster teamwork since everyone discusses their progress and resolves any problems that may have come up. Members of scrum teams can support one another in overcoming obstacles and applying the ideals and principles of agile.
- Have you ever come across an agile impediment? Daily scrum sessions can serve as a platform for problem-solving. Scrum teams can discuss their problems or concerns with one another so that other team members can offer potential solutions.
Conclusion
A team stand-up meeting is a useful tool for making sure that everyone on the scrum team understands the tasks and objectives. It enhances communication, cuts down on meetings, identifies development roadblocks for removal, highlights and encourages speedy decision-making, and raises the degree of knowledge of the development team.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Do scrum meetings have to be daily?
Every working day should include a discussion of the three concerns at the daily scrum. There is a broad assumption that daily scrum meetings are meaningless since nothing vital is addressed there, and sometimes team members may choose not to have the meeting because they feel there is "no value" in addressing "ordinary work-related matters." This should not be happening. The daily scrum is an essential component of the scrum methodology. The purpose of the meeting is to go through any potential issues and provide feedback on the team's development. Since the essential concepts of "inspect" and "adapt" cannot be realized without leveraging feedback from the process flow, scrum emphasizes the requirement for timely input.
2. What happens at the daily standup scrum meeting?
The daily scrum, which is conducted by the scrum master, is a quick status-check and communication session when scrum teams report concerns, talk about their progress, and make commitments for the following sprint or iteration. Every day at the same time and place, ideally in the morning, the daily stand-up takes place. It is a very constrained and narrow conversation. The stand-up meeting's focal point is the scrum task board.
3. What is the difference between daily scrum and daily standup?
A stand-up meeting is a quick get-together where team members can talk about progress and ask for help. An average session lasts 15 minutes. Team leaders may take advantage of this chance to share announcements or project updates. Teams from a variety of industries, including marketing and operations, may use stand-up meetings to manage their projects. Stand-up meetings are a regular occurrence for teams adopting the agile methodology to accomplish software development projects whereas, during a daily scrum, each team member reports what they accomplished the day before, what they hope to accomplish today and any potential impediments. Every day there are meetings that last no more than 15 minutes. A daily scrum may be used by teams from many different sectors, although software engineers often utilize it the most.
4. Who starts the daily scrum?
The decision to select the scrum master, a particular scenario, such as the newest member, or another person to do so is made by the team each day. Therefore, the scrum master should train the team in self-management techniques.
If the team regularly struggles to get started, the scrum master must train the team to comprehend the goal of the stand-up and why it is crucial to start it on time and time-box it to 15 minutes by addressing this in workshops, retrospectives, and one-on-one meetings.
5. What are the questions asked at the daily scrum?
The following three questions are posed to the team during the daily scrum meetings:
- What tasks have you accomplished since our previous meeting?
- What are your plans for the time between now and the next meeting?
- Anything preventing you from going on?
These questions are asked to better understand each person's function. They will not always be advantageous to all teams equally, either. Teams adjust the questions as necessary to suit the requirements of their project.
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