Article 5 - Daily Stand-ups are waste of time.
One of the team members told me that daily stand-ups are waste of time.
I agree. Don’t you agree with me?
Why do we need daily Stand-ups anyway?
Maybe it is a good opportunity to drink coffee together, 15 mins break to check our emails/phones (thanks to WFH), maybe it is a chance to see who is in the office (if back to office is a thing).
Ok, I know what you are thinking.
Let’s consider a typical scenario.
What usually happen in a daily stand-up?
Stand-up Host: Good morning, everyone, let’s get started/welcome to daily scrum.
Team member 1: Starts describing what they did yesterday and what they are doing today.
Team member 2, 3, and 4…. All are iterating in the same lines. Is this what you do in your daily stand-ups?
Then definitely daily stand-ups are waste of time.
How important is this for anyone in the room? Maybe a little for few if they are listening.
You might ask what’s wrong with it, this is what we are coached to do, and we are doing this since, I don’t know, for ages.
Major flaw in this type of daily scrum is it lacks purpose. Hence it is waste of time.
So, what is the Purpose of Daily Scrums?
The purpose of the Daily Scrum aka daily stand-up is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work. (Ref. Scrum Guide 2020. Page 9)
What you did yesterday?
If you have successfully executed something you planned to do yesterday, then it is great, you accomplished something and it is past, it can be important as a topic of discussion in the stand-up if you have any impediments and you need help to resolve it. If not, you are on track towards sprint goal.
Now, what you are doing today?
What you are doing today is very important to you and if you are clear on the requirements and have a plan to execute it without any dependencies or conflicts then you are good to go.
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What purpose it serves to others in the room on what you are going to do, unless you need some help from others.
Do you know: Daily Scrum is not a status update meeting.
Why Daily Scrum is so important?
The importance of the Daily Scrums is to improve communications, identify impediments, promote quick decision-making, and consequently eliminate the need for other meetings. (Ref. Scrum Guide 2020. Page 9)
Do you know: It is not mandatory for Scrum Master to host Daily Scrums; it can be done by Developers/any member of the Scrum team.
What should be the structure of the Daily Scrums?
Daily Scrums are for the Scrum team, the team will decide what structure and techniques they want to use for the daily scrum. If you as a team still want to know about the work which happened in the past then so be it, as long as it is serving the purpose and it is helping you to make actionable plans for the present.
Fact-Check:
The Developers can select whatever structure and techniques they want, as long as their Daily Scrum focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal and produces an actionable plan for the next day of work. This creates focus and improves self-management. (Ref. Scrum Guide 2020. Page 9)
The most important focus of the daily scrum should be identifying and resolving impediments through quick decision-making, if possible, by eliminating the need for further meetings.
If this can be achieved during the daily scrum, then lot of time can be saved, and you don’t have to blame lack of time to deliver value to customers because you are attending too many meetings.
This is a part of Decoding Scrum Guide 2020 series.