Daily Scrum — a 3-min overview
Welcome to Scrum Sutra — a series where I shall share a 3-min overview of each element of Scrum and how it connects with the other elements in the bead to form Scrum Sutra.
Today, I shall talk about Daily Scrum.
The purpose of Daily Scrum is to establish a shared and common understanding between Developers on how they are progressing w.r.t. the Sprint Goal, make necessary adaptation to their upcoming planned work which reflects in the Sprint Backlog.
The Daily Scrum also helps improve collaboration and surface impediments, and promotes quick decision-making.
The self-managing Developers participate in this event. If the Product Owner and the Scrum Master also work on the Sprint Backlog items, then they can also participate.
The event is timeboxed to maximum of 15 minutes irrespective of the Sprint duration. The reason to timebox is to increase transparency in effectiveness of the event, and retain focus on objective. It is the accountability of Scrum Master to ensure that the event remain within timebox. She also ensures that the Developers understand the purpose of the event, that it takes place in a positive, productive way.
The key input to Daily Scrum is a highly visible Sprint Backlog, that contains the Sprint Goal, the Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint and the plan to deliver them. This is the accountability of Developers.
The input also includes revised Capacity of Developers, new input from the Product Owner and any risk and opportunity in relation to achieving the Sprint Goal.
Scrum Guide does not prescribe to any format or structure to the Daily Scrum, and let the self-managing Developers select what works for them, as long as they remain focused to the Sprint Goal and produce and actionable plan for the next day.
The output of Daily Scrum is an updated and highly visible Sprint Backlog and list of impediments, if any.
Post the Daily Scrum, the Scrum Master causes the removal of impediments toward the Scrum Team’s progress.
In the Daily Scrum event, the Developers remain open to demonstrate progress, open to feedback, open to ask for, and offer help, courageous to make any course adjustment, while remaining committed to the Sprint Goal.
That’s a 3-min overview on Daily Scrum. Stay tuned to the next in the Scrum Sutra series.
