Daily Scrum

Summary: Update and coordination between the Team members.
Participants: Team is required; Product Owner is optional; Scrum Master is usually present but ensures Team holds one.
Duration: Maximum length of 15 minutes.

Once the Sprint has started, the Team engages in another of the key Scrum practices: The Daily Scrum. This is a short (15 minutes or less) meeting that happens every workday at an appointed time. Everyone on the Team attends. To keep it brief, it is recommended that everyone remain standing. It is the Team’s opportunity to synchronize their work and report to each other on obstacles. In the Daily Scrum, one by one, each member of the Team reports three things to the other members of the Team: (1) What has been accomplished since the last meeting?; (2) What will be done before the next meeting?; and (3) What obstacles are in the way?. Note that the Daily Scrum is not a status meeting to report to a manager; it is a time for a self-organizing Team to share with each other what is going on, to help them coordinate. Someone makes note of the blocks, and the Scrum Master is responsible to help Team members resolve them. There is little or no in-depth discussion during the Daily Scrum, the theme is reporting answers to the three questions; if discussion is required it takes place immediately after the Daily Scrum in one or more parallel follow-up meetings, although in Scrum no one is required to attend these. A follow-up meeting is a common event where some or all team members adapt to the information they heard in the Daily Scrum: in other words, another inspect and adapt cycle. For Teams new to Scrum, it is generally recommended not to have managers or others in positions of perceived authority attend the Daily Scrum. This risks making the Team feel “monitored” – under pressure to report major progress every day (an unrealistic expectation), and inhibited about reporting problems – and it tends to undermine the Team’s self-management, and invite micromanagement. It would be more useful for a stakeholder to instead reach out to the Team following the meeting, and offer to help with any blocks that are slowing the Team’s progress.