Scrum meeting. Are you kidding me?

Recently I was part of a "Daily Scrum Meeting" in a reputed product development company (I travelled to work with this company on a joint initiative, anyway that is not the point of this blog post).  I was really baffled at the way the meeting was happening, because there were several things that didn't go well during that meeting.  Being a huge fan of Agile and a committed practitioner, it was concerning that people were actually adopting it the wrong way.  I felt like asking to them "Is this a Scrum meeting? Are you guys kidding me?".   In this blog post, I am sharing some of the learning from the meeting were:

• Everyone on time

A Daily Scrum is a commitment to the entire team.  So everyone needs to be on time for the meeting.  Never forget your meeting etiquette. :)

• It's for everyone team

A Daily Scrum meeting is for the entire Scrum.  It is not just a subset of the people.  Agile focuses highly on team collaboration and it's high time teams understand that.

• Everyone present throughout

Intention of the daily stand up is to have the team members communicate, collaborate and the team should be knowing what each others are doing.  No one should leave a meeting in the middle.

• Everyone stands up

Again this is a basic etiquette.  A scrum meeting is a standup meeting and no one sits.  The whole idea here is not to get comfortable by sitting down, and thereby forcing us to wrap the meeting on time.

• Each person talks to the team not to the scrum master

A Scrum Meeting is not a status reporting meeting to the Scrum master.  It is rather an update about what each one is doing to the entire team and if there are any impediments or roadblocks to achieve a target.  So every person should talk to the entire team rather than the Scrum Master.

• No detailed discussions

A scrum meeting should only have each person answer 3 questions:

1. What did I do yesterday?
2. What will I do today?
3. Is there anything that is stopping me from doing my work?

If there are any discussions that are taking a long time, it is best to take it later on rather than in the scrum meeting.

• Where is the Product Owner?

The Product Owner should be involved in the Scrum meeting so that he knows how the product is progressing.  If a Scrum Meeting happens without the Product Owner, I am not sure what is the point in having it in the first place.

• AM or PM

Typically Scrum meeting works best when it is done in the morning.  It works best for the team as everyone will know what to look forward to for the rest of the day.

Everyone makes mistakes, but the important thing is to learn from those mistakes as quickly as possible.  That is the best way to get better.

Have you ever seen a scrum meeting go bad? If so please feel free to share your experiences in the comments section.  Hope these learning will make the community better.

Related Articles & References

Daily Scrum by Mountain Goat Software
Its not just standing up by Martin Fowler.

About the Author

Rajaraman Raghuraman has nearly 8 years of experience in the Information Technology industry focusing on Product Development, R&D, Test Data Management and Automation Testing.  He has architected a TDM product from scratch and currently leads the TDM Product Development team in an IT MNC.  He is passionate about Agile Methodologies and is a huge fan of Product Development, Agile Development and Agile Testing.  He blogs at Test Data Management Blog & Agile Blog.  Connect with him on Google+