Saturday, June 18, 2011

THE DAILY SCRUM MEETING

What is the Daily Scrum Meeting?

A scrum is rugby play in which team members come together in a compact formation to move the ball down the field.

The daily scrum is the one of the three stages in Agile Planning.

  • Release Planning,
  • Sprint Planning,
  • Daily Planning.

This is the daily part. Everyday the team members gather around in a circle, generally around the Story/Task board and everyone, one at a time, answers three basic questions:

  • What tasks I worked on yesterday?
  • What tasks I plan to work on today?
  • What risks/obstacles stand in the way of my plan?

We must be aware of that the daily scrum is not used as a problem-solving or issue resolution meeting. Issues that are raised are taken offline and usually dealt with by the relevant sub-group immediately after the daily scrum.

It shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes.

Rules for Scrum Meetings:

  • Choose a scrum leader to enforce the rules during the sprint

  • Hold scrums every day in the same location and at the same time - preferably first thing in the morning

  • Each scrum should last only 15 to 30 minutes

  • Ask all participants the same three questions: What did you do since the last scrum? What are you going to do between now and the next scrum? Is anything in the way of you doing your work?

  • Address issues other than the three questions outside the scrum – this includes suggestions for a team member who's hit a roadblock

  • Managers are not allowed to speak

  • If a manager or colleague assigns unplanned work to a team member that will throw the team's schedule off track, the scrum leader has the power to excuse the person of the additional work. The work must either be fit into the next sprint or be assigned to someone who's not on the team.