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“Wait, there’s a meeting every day?” That was the question I was interrupted with while explaining the rhythm of Scrum to a new team. This concern is both familiar and understandable. Ask almost anyone if they want more meetings, and their answer is a clear “no.”
You may be asking why Scrum has all these meetings and do we really need them all?
Those are great questions to dive into. In this post, I’m focusing on the Daily Scrum, also called the Daily Standup. It’s one of the first meetings new teams ask about because it happens every day.
The Daily standup is a brief daily check-in for the Scrum team. When I say brief, I mean it. Think 15 minutes or less. It’s called a standup because it’s so short you don’t need to sit down.
This article with cover four essential topics for the daily scrum
- How the daily standup keeps your team focused.
- Who participates in the daily standup.
- The agenda for the daily standup.
- How the daily standup save you time.
The Daily Scrum/Standup keeps the team focused and collaborative.
Every day for fifteen minutes, the development team inspects the previous day's work, plans the next day’s work and identifies any barriers to getting things done. You may be thinking, “Really? A meeting every day?” The Standup keeps the team in sync by making the work visible.
In a sense, every day, they review, re-prioritize and re-plan the work for the sprint. And all that in 15 minutes. These daily adjustments keep the team very focused on what to do, and it also immediately highlights problems to address quickly.
This clarity often reduces the overall number of meetings and communication. The team stays up to date on their work, what obstacles they face, and what changes they make. This focus and agility significantly increase the team’s effectiveness. Doing the right work without getting stuck on obstacles creates an incredible ROI for a 15-minute meeting.
The Standup keeps the team in sync by making the work visible.
The Standup is held at the same time and place each day. This simple consistency removes the need for communication and coordination of schedules, and it quickly becomes an essential part of the team's rhythm.
The whole Scrum Team participates in the Daily Standup.
Everyone in the Scrum team comes to the Standup. But it’s not just an attendance thing, and participation is critical. Let’s walk through how each role participates.
The development team sets the structure for the daily standup
The dev team is the ones who do most all of the talking because they are doing the work. They set the meeting structure and decide what questions they will ask or what order they will go in. They provide updates and ask questions of one another.
The scrum master attends and helps the team learn to run the daily scrum.
The meeting is the team’s responsibility and they are accountable. If the team identifies a problem and immediately goes into problem-solving mode, the Scrum master might remind them about the focus of the daily Scrum and ask if they have enough clarity to wait until after the meeting to continue creating a solution.
The scrum master is also paying attention to obstacles that surface. I would usually keep a list of what I hear during the meeting and immediately follow up with people to see how we could get them unstuck.
The product owner is there to listen and respond.
The product owner doesn’t need to give any updates, but they still have two critical roles during the meeting.
- The product owner can answer questions from the development team about the work.
- The product owner listens to understand how the work is going and better understand what obstacles the team is encountering.
Keep the daily standup to just the Scrum team.
It can be tempting for other leaders in the organization to want to attend the Standup, and I don’t recommend this. It changes the environment from a collaborative engagement to status updates that feel more like reading a presentation than solving a problem. This meeting is for the team, not the organization, and those leaders can attend the sprint review to see how the work progresses.
If the team is colocated, the meeting should happen next to the Scrum board, where all the work can be visible and actively referenced during the session. If they are a distributed team, the board should be visible to everyone. I’ve found the Standup to be a critical cadence for keeping distributed teams in sync.
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The Daily Scrum has a clear agenda.
The daily standup is not a complicated meeting. Everyone on the development team answers three questions:
- What have I finished?
- What will I complete today?
- Is anything getting in my way?
I’ve seen these questions tweaked at times, but they serve essentially the same functions of making the work visible and actively evaluating the progress.
It’s common for one team member to share they are having trouble with something, and another team member says, “I can help with that.” That’s all they need to discuss at that moment, and the meeting can keep moving forward.
These questions help focus the conversation and move the meeting along. It will take some work to learn to keep the meeting to 15 minutes. The discussion is short, light, and focused. If the team needs to address an obstacle, write it down and tackle it after completing the daily scrum.
Inevitably, someone will ask, “Can we just provide our updates in Slack?” Don’t do it. The shared presence and focus of the Standup are critical for keeping the team aligned, and this just isn’t the same in a Slack thread. I have seen teams use Slack to support their standup by posting their answers as they share them. This practice is helpful because it provides a place for those follow-up conversations. But the danger is that team members start having a side convo and are no longer engaged with the whole team.
The Daily Scrum decreases your time in meetings.
Meetings are notoriously inefficient. We’ve all been to meetings that could have been an email, and I am continually trying to shorten and reduce my number of appointments. And as counterintuitive as it may seem, adding this meeting lowers the team’s overall meeting load.
I see two key areas where the daily Scrum reduces meeting time.
- Status updates during your weekly team meetings. The weekly team meeting seems to be a staple of traditional teams, and status updates usually take a significant amount of time. These updates are now happening daily, and the team has a better awareness of how things are going than they ever had. In reality, this whole weekly team meeting is no longer needed.
- Those meetings that aren’t on your calendar. What meetings am I talking about? Hint, they happen at your desk, where you were trying to work. Interruptions are exceptionally costly to productivity, and the daily Scrum helps reduce interruptions by concentrating those conversations within the meeting itself.
So let’s look at the math here.
15 minutes * 5 days a week = 75 minutes used.
10-minute interruption * 8 times a week = 80 minutes
30 minutes of status updates during your weekly team meetings.
80 + 30 = 120 minutes saved.
I tried to underestimate how many interruptions people experience on traditional teams, and I also didn’t include the lost effectiveness from the interruption itself. It takes you 25 minutes to get back on track after an interruption. Add that in, and you’re saving another 200 minutes per week!
Time savings don’t come just from meetings. Time is saved by not having team members stuck or working on something no longer needed. That kind of inefficiency can go on way too long in traditional teams.
Keep Learning about Scrum
I hope this helped you get a good overview of the Daily Scrum. If you want to learn more about the other meetings or roles in Scrum, check out the links below. Or, if you want it all in one place, see the What is Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum. If you have more questions, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
Maximize Your Leadership Potential
Leadership isn’t a journey you should take alone. What if you had someone to come alongside you? I provide coaching to help you reach your vision, lead others and grow as a leader.
This post is part of an upcoming guide called Everyday Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum where I will explore and explain the key elements of Scrum.
Perhaps you have heard about Scrum but are not exactly sure what it is. Or maybe you know some about it but are not sure how to apply it, especially outside a software development context.
You find my my current and future guides on everyday.design. Signup to be the first to know when new guides are released.
There are a lot of new terms when learning the Scrum essentials, and this post probably introduced you to some of the vocabulary.
If you want to learn more about specific Scrum topics, here are a few to choose from or check out the scrum FAQs.
Applying Scrum
- How do I keep my team focused on the right work?
- What to do when projects change?
- Getting work done as a team
- How to change direction after investing effort?
Agile in Everyday Life
- Can I use Scrum for non-software development projects?
- Scrum for marketing
- Scrum for creative design
- Scrum in content creation
- Scrum in personal development
- Scrum in education
- Scrum in everyday home projects
Scrum Roles
- What is a Scrum Product Owner?
- What does a Product Owner do each day?
- Getting Certified as a Product Owner
- What is a Scrum Master?
- What does a Scrum Master do each day?
- Getting Certified as a Scrum Master
- Can The Scrum Master And Product Owner Be The Same Person
- How Is A Scrum Master Different Than A Project Manager?
Scrum Meetings
- How to do a standup/check-in?
- How to do sprint planning in Scrum?
- How does backlog refinement work in Scrum?
- What is a sprint review in Scrum?
- How to conduct a retrospective in Scrum?
Scrum General Topics
- Why Use Scrum?
- What Is The Definition Of Scrum?
- What Are The Pros & Cons Of Scrum?
- Scrum: Expectations Vs. Reality
- Is Scrum Hard To Learn?
- How To Align The Scrum Values With Your Organizational Culture
- What's the difference between iterative and incremental development?
- What Is The Definition Of Done In Scrum?
Scrum Advanced Topics
- Learn To Forecast Progress In Scrum
- What If I Don't Have All The Roles In Scrum?
- Scaling Using SAFe
- Cost Estimation
To learn more about Scrum, check out my What is Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum. If you have more questions, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
FAQs
Scrum events overview
What are the Scrum events?
Sprint planning, daily standup, backlog refinement, sprint review, sprint retrospective.
The rhythm of scrum consists of various events.
- Sprint planning
- Daily standup
- Backlog refinement
- Sprint review
- Sprint retrospective
- The sprint
The last on the list is sometimes debated as to whether or not it’s actually a scrum event. I include it because it's critical to creating a cadence of work for the team.
Learn more about the rhythm of scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What scrum events are timeboxed?
Every Scrum event is timeboxed.
Most scrum events are timeboxed relative to the length of the sprint:
- Sprint planning: 2 hours / sprint week.
- Daily standup: 15 minutes.
- Backlog refinement: 2 hours / sprint week.
- Sprint review: 1 hour / sprint week.
- Retrospective: 45 minutes / sprint week.
Just because an event has a timebox doesn’t mean it needs to be that long. The timebox is the maximum time allowed for the event.
Learn more about the different scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
When should scrum events be held?
The Scrum team has freedom to adapt when some of the Scrum events are held.
Scrum events are generally held in the following order
- Sprint planning: Held at the very beginning of a sprint.
- Daily standup: Every day at the same time and place.
- Backlog refinement: Flexible. Held at whatever time and frequency best serves the team.
- Sprint review: Held on the last day of the sprint.
- Retrospective: Very last event of the sprint.
The backlog refinement session is unique in that it can be held anytime.
Explore further the events of scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Which scrum event is most important?
Trick question...
I included this because it is frequently asked, but the question misunderstands the importance of the scrum events. It’s like asking which of your limbs is most important. You may be able to answer, but they are really all critical.
If pressed for an answer, the daily scrum probably has the greatest impact on the team's effectiveness.
Learn more about the events in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Middle of a sprint
What is a daily standup?
15-minute daily meeting to set the team's focus.
The Daily standup is a brief 15-minute daily check-in for the Scrum team to do three things:
- Inspects the previous day's work.
- Plans the current day’s work.
- Identifies any barriers to getting things done.
It’s called a standup because it’s so short you don’t need to sit down.
Learn how to keep your team in sync with a daily standup. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What is scrum backlog refinement?
Previewing and defining future work.
During the backlog refinement session, the team previews upcoming work to ensure the following:
- Outcomes are clearly defined.
- Supporting information is visible.
- Resources are accessible.
There is flexibility for when to hold the backlog refinement session.
Learn more about how to run a backlog refinement session. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Scrum events purpose
What is the goal of each Scrum event?
Each event has a clear purpose.
- Sprint planning: Clarify the direction and goal for the sprint.
- Daily standup: Everyone on the team gains updated visibility into everyone’s work.
- Backlog refinement: Understand upcoming work.
- Sprint review: Present finished work to stakeholders for feedback.
- Sprint retrospective: Review how the team works and make necessary adjustments.
Understand the purpose of the scrum meetings. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Which scrum events facilitate inspection and adaptation?
Every event includes inspection and adaptation.
Inspection and adaptation (along with transparency) are pillars of scrum, so all events involve them.
- Sprint planning: the purpose and work of the sprint are inspected.
- Daily standup: progress toward the sprint goal is inspected, and adjustments are made.
- Backlog refinement: upcoming work is inspected, and PBIs are adapted.
- Sprint review: delivered work is inspected, and upcoming work is adapted
- Retrospective: team health and interactions are inspected, and norms or plans are adapted.
Learn more about the role of events in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Which scrum event is for process improvement?
Each Scrum event plays a role in process improvement.
Process improvement aligns closely with the scrum pillars of transparency, inspection and adaptation.
- Sprint planning: How do we improve the product?
- Daily standup: How do we improve our approach to the sprint goal?
- Backlog refinement: How do we improve the quality of the product backlog?
- Sprint review: How do we improve the functionality being delivered?
- Retrospective: How do we improve how our team works together?
Out of all the events, the retrospective is the most focused on process improvement.
Learn more about events in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What is the goal of the scrum of scrum event?
Coordinating between multiple Scrum teams focused on the same product.
The scrum of scrums is an extra scrum event used when multiple scrum teams are collaborating together on a single product. The session allows the teams to update each other on what has been done, what obstacles have been encountered, and what to do next. The scrum of scrums follows a similar pattern to the daily scrum session.
To learn more explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
Facilitating scrum events
How to facilitate scrum events?
Facilitation is customized to the event and the needs of the team.
Scrum events have a clear purpose and agenda but are still very interactive. Facilitation of scrum events is at its best when everyone is engaged, asking or responding to questions. All events are timeboxed, so the facilitator must ensure the team is always moving toward the goal.
Learn more about team member's responsibilities during scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How to improve scrum events?
Scrum events improve as participation increases.
Three strategies for increasing participation in scrum meetings are
- Clearly state the goal. Sometimes people don’t engage because they are unsure about the purpose.
- Use facilitation games. There are many facilitation exercises available for the scrum events.
- Invite feedback. Inspection is a pillar of scrum. Ask the team for feedback on what went well and how to improve.
Learn more about everyone’s roles and responsibilities during the scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Who facilitates (or owns) scrum events?
Different members of the Scrum team facilitate the various Scrum events.
Scrum cultivates shared ownership for all the events, but each still has a facilitator.
- Sprint planning: Scrum master.
- Daily standup: Development team.
- Backlog refinement: Product owner.
- Sprint review: Product owner.
- Retrospective: Scrum master.
Learn more about everyone’s roles and responsibilities during the scrum events. Then explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Does the scrum master facilitate all the scrum events?
The Scrum Master primarily facilitates sprint planning and the retro.
The scrum master primarily facilitates two scrum events:
- Sprint planning
- The retrospective
The scrum master can help facilitate other meetings while a new team is beginning to learn scrum.
Learn more about roles during scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.