The Agile Pocket Guide: A Quick Start to Making Your Business Agile Using Scrum and Beyond

Chapter 6

Daily Stand-Up, or Daily Scrum

Your Agile Team is more effective than any other Tribe out in the jungle because your team members constantly communicate with one another. One of the best ways to encourage this is through a Daily Stand-Up, or Daily Scrum. This is a daily morning meeting that facilitates team communication, fosters teamwork, discloses details of the project work, and highlights items for review, action, or execution. Every member of the project is invited, and every member of the Agile Team must participate; those who are outside of the core team should be silent participants. This stand-up meeting fosters shared accountability; it allows all members to be in tune with the challenges of the day and respond quickly to those challenges. This meeting is conducted standing up for a reason: it shouldn't last for more than 15 to 20 minutes. (See Figure 6.1.) Sometimes the team will go into more detailed discussion during this time; table it, and take it offline for further discussion after the meeting. Remember that the team members aren't addressing you with a status update; rather, they are addressing the team about their work and their issues. There is no hierarchy in this meeting; no single person needs to lead it every day.

Figure 6.1 A Team Conducting a Daily Scrum

Each member of the Agile Team is expected to answer three questions as part of the Daily ...