Focus your team at Daily Scrum

Opening story

"Jim volunteered to serve as Scrum Master for our team. One thing he is firm on; he won't start our Daily Scrum until everyone is there. That's the only way he can make sure everyone answers the three questions. It can be pretty frustrating having to wait to start, especially as it's the same people who are late every day. I really feel bad for Jim, too - it's a difficult job corralling us together! We joke about how it's like herding cats. Sometimes, though, I wonder... is that what Jim should really be doing? Shouldn't we be organizing ourselves, whatever that means?"

 Summary

Establish a culture of self-organization in your team by walking away from the Daily Standup.

 Context

You are a member of a team who has been practicing agile for at least 8 weeks.

 Problem

Your teams are reliant on a central person in order to conduct successful Daily Scrum meetings.

Forces

When many teams begin to work in an agile way there is general confusion around responsibilities of the Daily Scrum. 

The Daily Scrum is the heartbeat of the team. Every problem or difficulty a team faces with an Agile transformation will materialize during the Daily Scrum in one form or another. Often known as "Scrum Smells", these can manifest themselves in a wide variety of ways, ranging from people being late through to meetings not happening at all.

When faced with these kinds of issues, the typical human response is to take control and try to fix them. ScrumMasters (or people filling a similar role) can feel an immense amount of pressure to "fix" the meeting or the behaviors of people who are attending. For example, not starting the meeting until everyone is there or telling people when to speak. This can improve things in the short-term, but it damages the team's ability to self-organize in the long-term. Additionally, the root causes for the negative behavior have not been resolved and will continue to dog the team.

Therefore

Essence of the solution

Instead of trying to fix the problem, walk away from the Daily Scrum. Enable the team to take ownership of the issues, and help them to resolve them and improve.

More about the solution

Instead of trying to improve the situation by taking control, try doing the opposite - release control, and relinquish responsibility for the success of the 15 minutes to the Development Team.

On the surface, walking away from a team in trouble can seem like a radical and damaging proposal. After all, isn't it your job as a ScrumMaster or Agile Coach to enable the team to be as effective as possible? To do this, isn't it your responsibility to control the Daily Scrum?

Actually, no. As stated in the Scrum Guide, "The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, but the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box."

I'm sure that many of you who read this feel some form of... revulsion? Or fear? The idea of walking away from the team when the solutions are so clear seems absurd, right? In some instances, you're right, and walking away is the wrong thing to do. However, in my experience, those situations are less common than you'd think.

A core seed of agility is self-organization and self-management. The Daily Scrum is the heartbeat of the team. It is an important meeting in which to examine the team's ability to behave in an agile way. If you, as the Scrum Master, Coach or Product Owner (or even concerned team member) are the one fixing the issues for the team, you can stunt the team's ability to self-organize. You inadvertently restrict the team's ability to learn how to problem solve, while also placing yourself in the position of "problem-solving bottleneck" for anything the team encounters. What will they do if you're not around?

 We want to be vigilant about responsibility. There can be a subtle shift in communication between teams and their coaches where a subtle delegation of responsibility occurs, going from team to coach. It is not the coach's responsibility to fix the problems the team encounters; rather, a successful coach enables their team to handle their problems in a sustainable, systematic way. For example, establishing an impediment list that is prioritized by the team and then collaborating with them on how to remove those impediments.

Resulting Context (positive and negative consequences)

Walking away from the Daily Scrum can empower your team to take ownership of their process.

 Walking away shouldn't replace coaching. It's a method of putting the team in a position to accept ownership, rather than a form of abandonment. You will still need to nurture the team in how to be most effective during the meeting, and ensure that they're in a safe, stable place to enable the right kind of conversation.

 Walking away with a team that hasn't reached a certain level of maturity can lead to dysfunction. You need to make sure that the team is strong enough to function as a unit before taking this kind of action.

Known Uses

"One morning, Boris, our Scrum Master, left us during our Daily Scrum. He also took Penny, our Product Owner, with him! At first, we were frustrated. Aren't you supposed to be there to keep us on track, Boris, and keep a note of our impediments? And by taking Penny, what will we do if we have questions. We realized, though, that we can follow up with Boris and Penny after the meeting with anything we needed help with. And them leaving was actually... well, refreshing. We didn't feel like we were being told what to say. We actually had to ask ourselves the question, "Okay, so, why are we here?" We're a much tighter team now."