Scrum/Daily scrum

Once a day a Scrum team gathers for their Daily Scrum.

Contents 1 Attendees are 2 Timing 3 Content 4 Role of chicken and pigs 5 Follow-up tasks

Attendees are

• Team members (as pigs)
• The Product owner (as a chicken)
• The ScrumMaster
• Any other stakeholder who wants to inform himself about the progress (as a chicken)

Timing

This meeting is very basic and should be timeboxed to 15 minutes. A fixed time is set by the team. It should allow all team members to participate and not interfere with their schedule. It is generally considered ideal to do this meeting at the beginning of the day as it helps motivate the participants.

It takes places every day at this time also if some of the attendees are missing.

Content

Each team member explains what they were doing the last day, what they are going to be doing today (until the next daily scrum) and what impediments are obstructing them in their work.

If the actual work done in the last day differs from what the team member had planned the previous day, this usually points to an impediment. The same applies if an item is progressing at a much slower speed than expected (e.g. was planned for 1 day but after 1 day is not near finishing)

If a few comments are not enough to locate the problem, this should be noted and discussion be deferred. The same applies to technical and organizational discussions.

At the end of the meeting all participants have a clear understanding of where the team stands and what its next steps are.

Role of chicken and pigs

During the meeting, only pigs are allowed to speak. Chicken can only speak when they are invited by the pigs to do so.

Follow-up tasks

• Team members update the status and (where used) effort remaining in the planning spreadsheet.
• If discussions have ensued during the daily scrum meeting, these are either taken up again at the end, or if time is up, scheduled for a later point.
• The ScrumMaster clarifies found impediments and if no immediate solution can be devised, adds them to
  • the product backlog - if an impediment can be solved by the team
  • the impediment backlog - if an impediment touches other parts of the organization

(see Scrum/Impediment for more information)

Category: Scrum