A New Approach to Daily Scrum

The Daily Scrum is an essential Scrum ceremony. Not only does this meeting ensure that team members communicate at least once every day, it also serves as an opportunity for transparency, inspection, and adaption.

Daily Scrum is meant to be a collaborative planning session during which the team and only the team discusses their plan for the next 24 hours. The discussion during the Daily Scrum should focus on collaboration and progress towards the sprint goal.

The Popular Approach

The most common questions answered during a Daily Scrum meeting are

• What did you accomplish yesterday?
• What do you plan on doing today?
• Are you facing any impediments?

While these three questions can help team members focus on progress toward the sprint goal, these questions can also easily lead to teams giving a status report. Having Daily Scrum meetings become Daily Status meetings is a huge anti-scrum pattern but also a very easy habit to fall into.

Status meetings have little to no value for Scrum teams. Why? If members of a Scrum team are constantly communicating, any status reported during a daily meeting would likely be redundant information. Instead, using the Daily Scrum to plan an approach for the next 24 hours based on the outcome of the previous day’s work is much more valuable.

A New Approach

The following list includes alternative questions a Scrum team may consider during Daily Scrum to help keep the meeting focused planning rather than statuses.

Questions to consider during the Daily Scrum:

• What’s your plan for today?
• Did you make the progress that you wanted to/expected to make yesterday? If not, how can you get back on track?
• Is there anything blocking you from what you hope to achieve today?
• Are there any unexpected tasks that you need to attend to today?
• Do you need to work with someone specific today?
• Is there a specific question you need answered today?
• Do you have any meetings today?
• What’s your availability today?
• What should the team be aware of regarding your work today?
• What information do you have that will benefit the entire or the majority of the team?
• Do you need any help with your work today?

You may have noticed that the word “today” appears in many of these questions. Daily Scrum meetings are short, only 15-minutes long, and occur every day, so it’s important to ensure that the information you’re providing is concise, relevant, valuable, and timely.

How does your team structure your Daily Scrum? Share your Daily Scrum tips in the comments below!