Daily scrum, daily stand-up meeting, Scrum standup ceremony, Daily Scrum meeting, Agile standup event
Daily Scrum or Daily stand-up is an internal inspect and adapt Scrum ceremony for the developers which is held each day of the Sprint at the same time and place, is timeboxed to 15 minutes and it is a planning meeting, not a status report. Because the level of details in the discussion is kept at a minimum, individual members might get together after the meeting to follow up, discuss issues in detail, adapt and re-plan.
Daily Scrum format
During the daily standup, the team visualizes the entire team’s progress towards the sprint goal, not just individual answers, updates the sprint backlog and identifies possible new impediments. Furthermore, the daily event is also a formal opportunity for each developer in the team to see if a colleague is blocked for several days and offer to help or for the ones blocked to either ask for help or to report an impediment that is blocking them. The Daily Scrum is not intended as a status update meeting and developers don’t have to justify what they did.
Daily Scrum details
The Daily Scrum event is the ceremony in which the developers inspect the work done yesterday, plan work for today, forecast work for the rest of the Sprint, visualize the progress towards the Sprint goal, better understand how they will work together as a self-organizing team in building the increment and identify possible impediments that might prevent them from reaching the Sprint Goal.
Each team member answers the three questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you doing today?
- Do you have any impediments?
But in order not to run the meeting as a status report, the Scrum Team focuses on the following:
- Visualize the progress of the team towards the Sprint Goal
- Analyze how things are going with the top-priority items
- Inspect how the team is doing in regards to the Sprint Plan
- Surface any impediments that block the team from reaching the Sprint Goal
- Identify opportunities to work together during the day
- Check if it is needed to start pair-programming
- Ask for help if stuck or offer to help others
- Prioritize helping others instead of starting new work
- Check what can be finished today if working together
- Check if there is any tweak or workaround needed to reach the Sprint Goal
- Adapt the Sprint Backlog accordingly if necessary
- Identify coordination opportunities outside the team
- Create an actionable plan for the rest of the day
- Share new learnings and celebrate small wins
- Figure out how to make the next Daily Scrum more effective
Daily Stand-up participants
The Scrum Master and the Product Owner can participate in the daily standup, but it is essential for the developers to attend and to have the ceremony every day. The developers are the ones deciding on the format of the ceremony, while the Scrum Master can guide them on the goal, format and timeboxing of the meeting.