Daily scrum meetings are vital to the success of every team. Due to the fact that the meeting’s primary goal is to align all members, overcome obstacles, and provide opportunities to seek help or additional clarity, those are the most crucial 15 minutes of the day for every team member.
Oftentimes, this meeting is contaminated with old company practices and turns this event into status reporting, so after a while, it becomes monotonous and tedious.
Organizations who use daily scrum meetings, on the other hand, label themselves as Agile even if they just used one Agile tool or practice. But they have to start somewhere, which is OK if they are still at the beginning of the adoption process. These common pitfalls, which are detailed in this article, should be avoided in the process of implementing this beneficial Agile practice by all parties involved.
What is the actuality Daily Scrum meeting
A daily Scrum meeting is a brief, time-boxed gathering of members of the Scrum team to deliver updates on what they worked on the previous day, what they plan to do today, and what impediments or challenges they have encountered.
Daily Scrum sessions are typically 15 minutes long. The daily stand-up meeting should preferably be held at the same time and place every day to reduce complications. To emphasize the importance of time, some teams have the meeting standing up.
What to avoid in your daily sync meetings
- Inconsistency in arrival time
Being late for any meeting is inconvenient, but it’s especially so when the sessions are only 15 minutes long. Hold your team accountable for always arriving on time.
- Taking over the discourse
It is critical to provide each team member the opportunity to speak. If you see that particular team members have a tendency to ramble on, reinforce this at the start of each meeting.
- The meeting is chaired by the Scrum Master.
This is simply incorrect. Many Scrum Masters believe that their primary role is to lead the Daily Scrum and guide the Development Team.
Daily Scrum should always be led by the Development Team and only the Development Team. The Scrum Master is there to help them, to make sure the meeting doesn’t go over the allotted time (15 minutes) and to make sure everyone is heard. This is not the time nor place for Scrum Master egotism or micromanaging the team.
- Formalizing the process excessively
Don’t make your scrum meetings too complicated. Maintain the same agenda each time you meet, and use consistent meeting technology. Daily scrum meetings require no more than 10 minutes of meeting preparation time.
Using the daily scrum as a means of tracking progress This is yet another anti-pattern to avoid at all costs. The Daily Scrum event is not intended to be a status report event for stakeholders.
Sprint Review is here to help you with that. Again, Daily Scrum is intended to help the development team plan for the day ahead and reflect on their daily activities.
- It’s a waste of time to do a Scrum meeting every day.
You’d be shocked how many development teams think this way, to the point where they abandon Daily Scrum entirely.
Teams that don’t perceive the value of Daily Scrum are either not doing it correctly or someone hasn’t explained the goal of this activity to them.
Avoiding Daily Scrum is bad, and it’s an anti-pattern that needs to be addressed right away. Simply put, the teams must see the value in examining and changing their plan on a daily basis.
- The absence of esteem
A lack of respect for such meetings and fellow team members lays the groundwork for a variety of things that can and will go wrong in the future.
The development team will fall apart if there is no teamwork, collaboration, trust, and cooperation among its members, and the project will suffer as a result. This anti-pattern is the devil of a well-functioning team, which is what development teams should strive for.
- Business owners and managers are dominating the discussions.
It’s even worse than having the Scrum Master manage the meetings. Stakeholders and managers may be present if the Development Team agrees, but they must realize that they will not be able to take over the meeting.
Even if this is obvious, their presence may cause the Development Team to feel observed and evaluated; if this occurs, they should notify the Scrum Master, who will then put a halt to the practice.
- The absence of a centralized source of information
Instead of blaming the developers, the Scrum master, project managers, VPs, or anyone else, we should: Examine the scenario and try to identify the root source of the problem.
Create methods that will allow us to make everyday Scrums as useful as they were intended to be.
- The questions must be asked!
What exactly did we do? What are our alternatives? What is the roadblock? Let’s be honest: questions are crucial in Daily Scrum, but they are not required.
Many development teams have been encouraged to avoid asking questions at all costs, however this is an anti-pattern. A Daily Scrum should proceed in the manner desired by the development team. To put it another way, whatever works best for them. Often, teams need to be coached to adopt this mindset and run their daily meetings.
- Put quality aside
One of the most common anti-patterns pushed on development teams is the failure to focus on the quality of the increment. CEOs desire a quick time to market. They expect things to be completed as soon as possible, and in most circumstances, the teams must deliver. Quality is the first thing to disappear in this case.
Quality comes first if you desire an Agile environment and Scrum framework. As a result, teams should be encouraged to discuss difficulties during Daily Scrum and how to fix bugs, defects, and other issues as soon as they uncover them, even if it means jeopardizing the stats.
Action
Anti-patterns for the Daily Scrum can be found all over the place. When these anti-patterns become a habit, things get a little out of hand. Anything that could slow down the teams should be avoided because it is a barrier. You can still change your mind as you go along, though because continuous improvement is at the heart of the Scrum framework’s Agile philosophy.
