The fourth question in daily Scrum

Each individual of almost every Scrum team will be answer three questions at daily standup meeting: what have you completed yesterday, what will you do today and what are the difficulties that hold you from get your things done? there may be small variance in text from the standard questions, but the essence is the same.

There's the fourth question added in our Scrum teams, the question is : are there any person that you want to say thanks from last daily Scrum? or in other words: are there any behaviors from others that you want to praise? No matter what the question text is, the core is to express your gratitude to all the other individuals, either in your team or out of your team, who has provided helps to you and your team.

But why do we add that fourth question? there're many reasons and values:

Firstly, this question aligns with the core Scrum values which are commitment, openness, focus, courage and respect. The answer of this question embodies the respect to others for all the things that they’ve done for you in order to help you and your team move forward.

Secondly, it facilitates the team work. Image that the people who just did a very small things for you and was thanked by you in the daily standup, he/she may feel that all the time and efforts that was spent is worthwhile, and will be willingly to do the same to others, no matter being asked or not. Cooperation between each other and each Scrum team would be enhanced if everybody would like to provide help to each other proactively.

Thirdly, it creates a good mood for everybody. In most cases, people start the day with the daily Scrum, and it would make people very well, if they’re appreciated by somebody in the meeting. Eight hours in the office is a long day, starting from a good mood will make every body happy in the whole day.

Fourthly, this question will bring more fun to the teams. The first three “standard” questions are mostly focus on the tasks and the status updates, which creates a little bit “stress” within the team because everybody need to be prepared and need to be 100% focus and everyone else in the team. The tense atmosphere would be eased when people come to think about answers to this question. Work should be funny.

Fifthly, it would create a recognition culture among team members within the Scrum team and across Scrum team, because everything each individual done for others, no matter within the same team or external to the team would then be well recognized.

All in all, this question will help to make your Scrum team more self-organized. Then comes the question of when to ask/answer this question in the daily Scrum? There’re typically two approaches:

The first way is to answer this question after the three questions, this is the most favorable approach of mine, because if everybody start to say thanks to the people and events that helps him/her, without being asked, it probably means that people are used to that, and has already made it a good buit-in habit.

The other one is at the end of the daily standup. The Scrum master will ask this question to everybody in the team, it is possible that in most cases, people will need one or two seconds to think about before starting to say the answers. It seems a little bit ceremonious, but a very good approach to start with.

As one step forward, team could try to visualize their answers on their whiteboard. Visualization is key when adpot the lean mindset in the Scrum development, and how to visualize it is fully depend on each individual team as they can make the decisions. As a simple start point, magnetic pastes could be used, i.e. when a team memeber receives thanks from another one, a magnetic paste will be put behind his/her name on the whiteboard, the total number of magnetic pastes will be equal to the total number of thanks he/her receives from others.

The visualization could be made even more interesting by applying different colors/shapes of pastes to indicate whether the specific pastes is received from others within the team or from other teams.

No matter whether you admit it or not, the fact is everybody is born to change the world, whether the change is negative or positive makes significant difference. By practice this fourth question, our ultimate expectation is that everybody would create positive impacts to the environment around, in their work and life.