The Daily Scrum or Stand-up is a meeting to improve collaboration towards the Sprint goal. In the Daily Scrum we should make a plan for the next 24 hours to get work done which contributes towards the Sprint Goal. In the Daily Scrum we explain to each other which impediments we encountered during the last 24 hours and we discuss how we can resolve those.
What we shouldn't do is to sum up a list of things we've done. That should have been made clear on the Scrum Board. Scrum is about transparency and the state of our work should always be visible. In the Daily Scrum we ask ourselves what we should do to move closer to the Sprint Goal, we don't discuss all the meetings we are going to today. This Daily event is time boxed at fifteen minutes; those fifteen minutes are all we get to align ourselves in moving towards the Sprint Goal.
The Daily Scrum is held by and for the Development Team (not the Scrum Team). Everybody is allowed to listen and only members of the Development Team are allowed to speak; even if you are a very important manager of some sort, simply hold it. As a Development Team we inspect what we did and what we should do to complete the work we committed to. When there are impediments we should make a plan to resolve those in order to finish the work. When it is clear that work won't get done in the allotted time frame we are obliged to inform the stakeholders to prevent surprises. The Daily Scrum is a tool to prevent (un)happy surprises. When we perform the Daily Scrum well, we encounter problems, but those should not age beyond a day.
Performing a Daily Scrum well is hard. It will turn into a status meeting if we don't pay attention to the purpose of the Daily Scrum. So here are some tips:
- Always meet at the same place and at the same time
- Monitor time
- Be there
- Use your Scrum Master to improve the Daily Scrum
- Don't let the Scrum Master take control of the Daily Scrum
- Inspect work done
- Inspect impediments
- Focus on getting things done
- Think about WIP-limits: a maximum of jobs that can be in progress
- Work together, don't sit on your own island of work
- After the Daily Scrum inform Stakeholders to prevent surprises
