Lesson 8 of 16 · Daily Scrum

Alignment on Daily Delivery Discipline

In this section, we'll learn all about the Daily Scrum Meeting. We will cover:

  • The inputs to the meeting
  • The Goal
  • Who attends
  • The Timebox
  • The general Approach to running the meeting,
  • And the outputs

Once a day, the Development Team holds the Daily Scrum Meeting. The Goal of the meeting is to inspect and adapt the ongoing work of the Sprint. The timebox is short, 15 minutes, and so it is important for the Development Team to be highly focused during the meeting.

The Scrum Master has three responsibilities related to the meeting. First, the Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting. Second, the Scrum Master ensures that others outside of the Development Team do not participate. And third, the Scrum Master teaches the Development Team how to keep the meeting within the 15-minute timebox.

This implies that the Scrum Master does not lead the meeting in a traditional sense. Once the Development Team has mastered the timebox and the meeting is a regular part of the team's daily work, the Scrum Master may choose not to attend, or may choose to attend in a purely neutral and facilitative role.

The Daily Scrum is typically held at the same time and place each day to reduce complexity. During the meeting, members of the Development Team explain their progress and plans in three areas:

  • What did I do yesterday to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
  • What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
  • Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?

The inputs to the meeting, then, are the Sprint Goal, and the Sprint Backlog, which is the Development Team's plan for how they will achieve the Sprint Goal.

To maintain the timebox, the Daily Scrum is focused on the Transparency and Inspect portions of the Empirical Process. It is critical that the entire Development Team is present to reach that shared understanding. The Adapt portion very often requires the input of only a subset of the Development Team – those involved with the portions of work that need to be adapted that day to meet the Sprint Goal. For this reason, it is common for some subset of the Development Team to meet directly after the Daily Scrum has concluded. They discuss how to self-organize around any issues that were raised, adapting the affected portions of the Sprint Backlog. The Adapted Sprint Backlog is the primary output of the Daily Scrum Meeting.

Effective Daily Scrum Meetings have several benefits:

  • They improve communication
  • They eliminate the need for other meetings
  • They identify impediments to development for removal
  • They highlight and promote quick decision-making
  • They improve the Development Team's level of knowledge.

Research has shown that effective Daily Scrum Meetings have a high correlation with successful implementation of the Scrum Framework.