Daily Scrum turning into Status review Meetings? Try this

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Let's first understand the intent of these two events and then explore what can be done to prevent Daily Scrum from becoming another status meeting.

Daily Scrum as per Scrum.org

The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work.

The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team. To reduce complexity, it is held at the same time and place every working day of the Sprint. If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers.

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.

Daily Scrums improve communications, identify impediments, promote quick decision-making, and consequently eliminate the need for other meetings.

The Daily Scrum is not the only time Developers are allowed to adjust their plan. They often meet throughout the day for more detailed discussions about adapting or re-planning the rest of the Sprint’s work.

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Status meeting as per PMI.org

Status review meetings are regularly scheduled events to exchange information about the project. On most projects, status review meetings will be held at various frequencies and on different levels. For example, the project management team can meet weekly by itself and monthly with the customer. (PMI, 2004, p. 233)

This is one tool that the project manager uses to “check in” on the project. Typically, the project manager wants to assess the status of each of the following elements during a status meeting:

• Task updates
• Schedule status update (Are we behind or ahead of schedule?)
• Budget status update (Are we under or over budget?)
• Quality/scope status update (Are we maintaining desired scope/quality levels?)
• Current or anticipated issues (e.g., changes, risks, resource issues, client satisfaction issues, vendor issues, etc.)
• ?Next steps

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Daily Scrum Behaviors to look out for -

Now let us look at some of the team behaviors signaling your Daily Scrum is turning into status review meetings -

• Scrum Master calling team member's names one after the other to answer standard 3 questions OR Every team member or “lead” answers standard 3 questions one after the other. In this case, it is often observed that every team member just waits for his/her turn to speak. In most cases, not everyone is attentive when the other person is speaking they are just busy waiting for their turn to speak
• Everyone is concerned about just completing their task by the time sprint ends without any or very less focus on the Sprint Goal which is just not to complete your Product backlog item but to deliver value. For example - consider a PBI having Front end development, Back-end development, and testing tasks. For this to be completed end to end collaboration and coordination are required to ensure that the PBI gets completed. If all three members aren't collaborating and helping each other there is high possibility that team will not be able to complete this end-to-end in time.
• Members come to the meeting just in time to cover their bit and leave

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In all the above cases, the team is not working as “One Team” instead everyone is concerned about completing their tasks/PBIs which is not a healthy sign for the team because complex products often have lots of dependencies, and collaboration and consideration of the effort required by other team members is the key to success ?

Solution

Here is what you can do to improve the situation -

• Instead of going around the team and asking everyone to answer the 3 questions, steer the conversation around the Product Backlog items and sprint goal. Discuss when that will be completed and what needs to be worked on next. OR if there is an impediment talk about it, and let the impacted PBI owner know so that their plan can be adapted.
• Start with one PBI, encourage discussion on the progress of the PBI, and then move on to the next one. This will allow the team to collaborate better and hand over quicker. Conversation and intent is now focused on meeting the sprint goal and not just completing individual tasks.
• With time you will start to see the signs of "One Team" behavior where everyone is helping everyone and dependencies are proactively highlighted and addressed. In other words, they will start moving away from the mindset of “completing my task” to completing what the team had agreed to i.e. “meeting the Sprint Goal”. ?

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?I have observed a positive drastic change in the team dynamics when Daily Scrum is run using this approach. Let me know what are your techniques for this.