Classic Mistakes at Daily Scrum Meetings
Daily Scrum is a Scrum Event which is time-boxed with 15 minutes, done at the same place and at the same time.
During the meeting each Scrum team member shares the answer of the three questions:
- What has been accomplished since the last meeting?
- What will be done before the next meeting?
- What obstacles are on the way?
(For more details about daily scrum please refer to scrum guide at http://www.scrumguides.org/ )
In this blog entry, I want to share my previous experiences which I perceive as classic mistakes at Daily Scrums.
- Missing Team Members: The meeting is done to share and align knowledge among the team, therefore missing members cannot get the last day’s information and do not have the opportunity to add value with their feedback if they have any. As the new information about the accomplishments and target of the day spreads at the meeting; the missing team member cannot gather this last minute information or actions as s/he is missing.
- Not Starting the Meeting at the Same Time: The team either does not make the meeting daily or does not make the meeting at the same time. Many of the teams prefer the meeting as the first meeting at the first hour of the work day. When some of the team members arrive late at work, the team prefers to wait the member rather than starting the meeting. In general, the waiting time period drops the efficiency of the team.
- Not Making the Meeting at the Same Place: It is better to make the meeting at a place where the team can see the sprint goals and status of the current stories or tasks. It is better to make the meeting in front of the scrum board.
- Turning Daily Scrum into a Report Meeting: One of the common mistakes done by team is turn the meeting into a reporting meeting to scrum master, product owner or to another person out of the team. Whenever a team member starts to report to me in a meeting, I try to indicate the meeting is their meeting to share information, not mine to report me, by either changing my location or moving behind another team member to get out of the eye contact, or by making a hand sign by showing other team members for the team member to speak to them rather than to me.
- Not Getting Prepared For The Meeting: I have sadly realized that team members have to get prepared for the meeting as they have answered some of the questions with such answers:
- “Let me give time to remember on which task I have worked on.”
- “I will start to work on the next task”: Just thing how will you feel if all the team members answer this way.
- “Do we have any obstacles?”: Such an answer, make me question if the team thinks about continues improvement opportunities.
- Zombie Team Members: I have come across with team members who speak so quietly that only members next to him or sometimes only himself can hear his answers such as “I have worked on story XYZ, and I’ll continue to work on it. I have no obstacles.” I do not find any value in such a sharing. As team we would like to know if there is value or information that should be shared with us about the items they have worked on. Is there any obstacles or improvement opportunities. Will the task be finished today or what percentage will be finished. Does the team member need any help from other team members? Team members that come to work, take a task from the board, work on it but do not add any other additional value to team, or do not share with team members, are the ones I call Zombie. Zombies take the energy of the team, rather than adding energy.
- Lack of awareness for the obstacles: Sometimes team members do not share their obstacles even they have some. I have experienced that the team members are not aware of the obstacles, or do not see them as obstacles. Some of the root causes of this situation are:
- Team members do not run after continues improvement opportunities, even sometimes they do not know what continues improvement is
- Team members get use to obstacles so that they do not write items to impediment list
- Team does not have an impediment list
- Team members do not search for improvement opportunities.
- Team members do not trust each other (how other team members might act about my personal/technical gap?)
- Meetings without burn down chart, or updated scrum board: The target of the daily work or the daily scrums is accomplishing the sprint goals. If we cannot see our current updated status at the meetings, we cannot know how to act in order to accomplish the sprint goals. In order to see our current status, and identify our next actions to achieve our goal we have to keep our burn down chart and board updated.
- Turning Daily Scrum into Technical / Requirement Meeting: AtDaily Scrum, the team members try to share their answers to the 3 questions. When we turn the meeting into a technical or requirement meeting it will probably go beyond the time-box of 15 minutes, and when the meeting ends, there might be team members who had not the opportunity to share. The solution to such needs of meeting is to set another meeting after the daily scrum with only the necessary attendees.
- Talkative chicken on the floor: The daily scrum is for the team members. Chickens can attend and listen, but it is not preferred a chicken to come and get into conversation. If any chicken needs knowledge sharing, or status meeting it should be handled as another meeting separately.
- Not listening to other team members during the meeting: As one of the purposes of the meeting is to share information and add value to other team members, any issue that causes not paying attention the other members should be removed.
- Meetings with Computers: Sometimes the team prefers to keep the scrum board, and burn down chart digitally. In such a case, a single computer with a projector controlled by the team member who shares information should be preferred. However, if all of the team members have their computers in front of them; their focus turns into their own screens rather than the shared screen.
- Lack of Acceptance of Meeting: Sometimes the team members do not value the meeting; the common indicator is the action of the scrum master who needs to invite other team members to start the meeting.
- Extending the meeting over 15 minutes: Most probably, out of the agenda (3 questions) issues are talked during the meeting. Two minutes can be given to each team member and a timer can be used for to track the time.
Please do not hesitate to share comments about your experiences about this topic