Practical Scrum: Are your daily stand-ups becoming boring?

(I’ve been using Scrum methodologies in different projects for over ten years. During these years, my teams and I have experimented and learned a few things about implementing Scrum. I plan to share my learnings over a multipart blog. I do not intend to cover the basics of Scrum. If you want to learn and start using Scrum, scrum.org is a great place to start)

Let’s talk about the most frequent scrum ritual, the stand-up or daily Scrum. 

If you ask any member of the teams using Scrum or any agile methodologies, what is one thing they dislike the most, I think daily stand-ups will come at the top. Stand-ups add a lot of value and are core to making the agile methodologies and overall project success. However, for the team, it can become un-exciting, and since you have to do it every day, it soon becomes boring. Does it have to be this way, though? The whole team coming together for a common goal at the start of every day could be a great opportunity and can have a positive impact beyond project delivery. So here are some ideas I’ve tried in my teams and also some ideas I learned from my colleagues.

Huddles: Why don’t we take inspiration from the team sports. Huddles are an integral part of team sports and help the team greatly in bonding and working towards a common goal of winning. We took that inspiration and started using it. At the end of stand-up up, we huddled up and broke the huddle with a cheer of the project name. It gets your blood flow going and acts as an energy booster at the beginning of the day. The team took a liking towards it. As a leader, I felt this helped the team develop a feeling of belonging and having a common goal. 

Superhero stand-ups: This is something I learned from a friend. Her team used to name their scrum teams based upon superheroes. They did not just name them but placed the superhero figurine in the stand-up area. The person providing an update had to hold the superhero figure in her hand. You can add many variations to this, but the basic idea is adding some fun elements to your stand-up and making it personal to your team.  

Have a ball: This is something I found while researching about breaking the monotony of the stand-ups. One of the most monotonous aspects of the stand-ups is going in clockwise or anti-clockwise order while providing the update. Instead, a team member providing updates can hold a softball and pass it in random order. This inevitably brings some playfulness. 

There are so many ways we could maintain the spirit and intent of the Scrum rituals and, at the same time, personalize and add fun elements to them. Just add a little bit of fun to work, and work becomes fun! We can surely learn that from minions.

Please try these techniques and see if you find them useful. I would love to hear if you try something new so please do share.