Tips and tricks from two decades of facilitating them
There are many ways to run a daily scrum. This is one way to help you get started using some tips and tricks I have learnt over the many years being part of them.
Preparation
Book it in for the same place, same time, every day – Make the daily scrum for 30 minutes, but time-box the main event for 15 minutes. This means that if people need time to discuss matters outside of the daily scrum, they can, rather than having to rush off. – Invite the Scrum Team and stakeholders as an optional. – Before booking it in, work with other teams to ensure there are no clashes, so that nothing prevents people from attending. – It is common practice to refer to this event as a daily standup or standup, but according to the Scrum Guide for Scrum events, the correct term is daily Scrum.
Before each daily scrum – Check to see if anything has been added, removed, or flagged in the sprint to determine if it needs to be raised. – Look at the flow. (For example, is there a lot in review or testing that needs to be moved?). – Bring up the board for the sprint.
Daily Scrum
If there is a critical issue, then don’t just go through the motions. Tackle this first so that people can then focus on going through the usual process.
Cascade any messages that the team might need to know about that affect their work that day; otherwise, you end up having the same meeting twice.
Review any new items, such as bugs or critical work that will change the scope of the sprint. Estimate it and remove work from the sprint to make way for it, if needed, based on the burn-down chart.
Go round each person in turn and filter the board based on that person. People answer the following (Encourage people to talk to each other, rather than you as the facilitator): – What they did yesterday – What do they plan to do today – Any impediments they have
Evaluate impediments as you go round – If people have any impediments, drill into them a bit to see if the team can unblock them, and if not, ask relevant people to stay at the end. – If work is blocked, flag it accordingly, such as adding a flag in Jira and specifying the reason. (Always encourage people to be empowered to solve their blockers or find workarounds, rather than creating dependencies)
Evaluate flow – If there is a lot of work in testing or review, then work with the team to work out how you can get the flow moving again. – Bring up the Sprint Burndown every other day so the team can see if they are on track
Checkpoints
Have a mid-sprint review after one of the daily scrums to look at the sprint overall and how things are going. This will allow the team to prioritise and adjust the scope of work to achieve maximum value if things are running behind schedule, or to prepare for additional work if anticipated.
For remote teams, having occasional social Daily Scrum sessions, such as a Friday quiz, can help build relationships. You may still find these useful, even if you are not working remotely.
