The purpose of this discussions is to explore the challenges that the community has faced with Daily Stand-ups, and to understand ways that you overcame them. (in or out of the box) I also have a few questions at the end, related to the structure of the stand-ups.
There are several certifying organizations with similar definitions for the Stand-up event...meeting. (Okay that was on purpose. I wanted to make some Agile heads explode.) I am not sure why, but it does; even though the scrum guide refers to it as a meeting numerous times.
I have included a few below:
Atlassian - Daily Standups: How to Run Them - Agile Coach Ep. 8 (2019)
Scrum.org - Daily Scrum: daily time-boxed event of 15 minutes for the Development Team to re-plan the next day of development work during a Sprint. Updates are reflected in the Sprint Backlog.
Scaled Agile, Inc. - Coordinating with Daily Stand-Up Meetings Each day, the team has a formal event—the Daily Stand-up (DSU) meeting—to understand where they are, escalate problems, and get help from other team members. During this meeting, each team member describes what they did yesterday to advance iteration goals, what they are going to work on today to achieve the iteration goals, and any blocks they are encountering in delivering iteration goals. As this is a daily coordination meeting, the Scrum Master has to keep it short and to the point. The DSU should take no more than 15 minutes and is done standing up in front of the storyboard. But team communication does not end there, as team members interact continuously throughout the iteration. Facilitating such communication is the main reason why ScrumXP prefers that the team be collocated whenever possible. © Scaled Agile, Inc.
Scaled Agile Inc - Scrum XP
Then comes the three questions, and don't deviate!!! (Agile gods get angry)
- What did I do yesterday?
- What will i do today?
- Impediments or Roadblocks?
I have found that the Agile community can sometimes be very rigid, even dogmatic about maintaining the structure of this meeting.
As Development Teams, is it time that we rethink the structure of the meeting, maybe even retool it? I have encountered some Scrum Masters that were more interested in adherence than information radiation, or meaningful communication among the team. Meaningful is subjective I know, but isn't that for the Development Team to decide?
Consider how the Scrum Guide defines this meeting.
The Scrum Guide defines this meeting's use as, "to inspect progress towards the Sprint Goal, and to inspect how progress is trending toward completing work in the Sprint Backlog."
The Scrum Guide also says that, "The structure of the meeting is set by the Development Team and can be conducted in different ways if it focuses on progress toward the Spring Goal. Some will use questions, some will be more discussion based." It then suggest the three questions, which have now become mainstream.
My questions for the Community is,
- What structures have you used in place of the standard Stand-up questions
- If you used Discussion based methods, did you stay within the 15 minute suggested time?
- What challenges have you encountered with this meeting?
- How did you overcome them?
- Do you think it is time to potentially re-work this meeting? Remember...have an Agile Mindset!
I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
