Gökhan İbili // Allianz Türkiye - Agile Coach
Daily Scrum rituals have been one of the important pillars of agile working model since the first scrum guide. When done correctly, it has an accelerating effect on being a team, but its contribution to the agile working process is very high compared to the time allocated.
According to the HEY Dictionary, the definition of a 'daily scrum' is:
A ritual in which all Squad members participate, lasting maximum 15 minutes, and gives information about the work to be done during the day. In the Scrum guide updated in November 2020, the content guidance for daily scrum has been removed, leaving the teams free. As an example of good practice, and the most widely used of the methods still in use, in a daily, each team member answers the following questions on his/her turn.
1) What did I do yesterday to help the Squad reach its sprint goal?
2) What will I do today to help the Squad reach its sprint goal?
3) Do I see any obstacles that will prevent me or the squad from reaching the sprint goal?
The purpose of these short meetings is for the whole team to see that the sprint to be run is progressing in accordance with its goal and to decide on the changes to be made if necessary. In this way, processes are simplified; complex situations are simplified by breaking them into daily parts. The meeting traffic required during the day to make a decision is reduced. Quick decision-making mechanisms come into play. The level of communication and information sharing within the team increases. Possible obstacles are detected faster and solutions are produced in a timely manner. With all these features, rapid adaptation of the team to changes is ensured.
So how do the 'daily's touch the 5 scrum values? Let's examine:
Courage: Dailys are the environment where we can express what we have done and failed to do from past to present, and where we can express problematic points. Since making mistakes and learning from mistakes is part of agile culture, these are meetings are where we are not afraid to take responsibility.
Focus: The aligner that we are sure to act in accordance with the purpose of the sprint, and that, in case of getting out of focus, we can return to the team route at most the next day in the morning.
Commitment: The platform where we can tell each day whether we have made the improvements we promised to make the previous day, and when we cannot make accurate predictions, we are offered the opportunity to do better the next day.
Openness: We tell what is happening as much as it is. When there is a problem, we can easily talk about it and become a part of the solution. We try to find a solution as a team rather than looking for a culprit at problem points. Openness is a precursor to establishing an atmosphere of trust within the team.
Respect: We listen to each other. We act with the awareness that success is in the form of the success of the team. Even though we are not face-to-face due to our circumstances, we open our cameras and do our best to start the day in a way that will give us all positive energy.
Finally, let me finish by mentioning the mistakes made in Dailys.
Daily is not a problem-solving environment. From time to time, we detail our conversations and try to solve the issue. The action to be taken at this point is to gather the relevant parties at another time to identify the obstacles and talk longer if necessary, and to decide on the solution at another time.
Since the concept of manager and titles do not apply in agile teams, this is not a place where we report the jobs to people above us in the hierarchy. Summarized information about the meetings held outside the sprint target should be conveyed on other grounds.
With a similar logic, it is not the environment where managers assign work to team members. In self-directed (autonomous) teams, team members know their own jobs and responsibilities and do not hesitate to do what is necessary.
Nor is it the place to solve another problem among ourselves when another team member is talking. Respect from the Scrum values requires that we genuinely listen to the team members speaking and be there in the moment.
Her takım üyesi anlatacaklarını 2-3 dakikada tamamlamakla yükümlüdür. 15 dakikayı geçen ‘daily scrum’lar zaman kuralının ihlâl edildiğini ve bir şeylerin hatalı yapıldığını gösterir.
Each team member is responsible for completing his/her story in 2-3 minutes. Daily scrums exceeding 15 minutes indicate that the time rule has been violated and something has been done incorrectly.
A daily only takes 15 minutes of your daily life, when done right it adds a lot of value to your team.
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