The Daily Scrum is a core ceremony of Scrum and one of the first that most teams adopt. But, despite its prominence, many teams struggle to grasp the point of this ceremony.

For example, let's look at a typical Daily Scrum for a team building an ecommerce product. We’ll start with our Scrum Master, Jenny.

Jenny: “Ok guys, let's circle up for the scrum. Joe, how about you go first?”

Joe: “Sure, yesterday I continued testing the shopping cart story and made it through the bulk of it. Today I should finish it and be ready to move on my next item. I have no blockers.”

Jenny: “Great. Sue?”

Sue: “Yesterday I made pretty good progress on the story to track inventory of items and automatically mark them as out of stock when we've sold the last one. There's still a good bit to do for this one though so I don't expect to finish it until tomorrow, at least. I have no blockers, either.”

Jenny: “Thanks, Sue. Pedro, that leaves you.”

Pedro: “Ok. Yesterday I wrapped up the data import of the next batch of new products and started work on importing our old customer contact list into the new app. This data is pretty messy, so it'll probably take me the rest of the day to wrap that up.”

What's Wrong?

At first glance, that may have seemed like a perfectly adequate Daily Scrum. The team circled up, talked about what they had been working on recently and what they would continue to do during the day. But, if you listened closely you may have noticed a common thread.

Each member of the team focused on a status update to their Scrum Master…not what they were actually doing to move their work forward.

Teams that are new to Scrum often fall into the trap of using the Daily Scrum as a simple status reporting meeting…especially if they’re transitioning from an environment where previously a large emphasis was placed on status reporting.

But, the Daily Scrum is much more than a status meeting. This ceremony is intended to be an opportunity for the team to synchronize and make a plan for the day about how they’ll work together to move closer to their sprint goal. In fact, just as the purpose of the Sprint Planning meeting is to give the team the chance to plan their work for the sprint to come, the purpose of the Daily Scrum is to give the team the chance to plan one slice of that sprint’s work for the day. But to do this, the team needs to shift away from simply reporting their status on their work each morning and instead shift their focus to what they’re doing to move their work forward that day. It’s only with this level of transparency can the team actually work together to plan their day’s work.

Let’s look at that same Daily Scrum again, but from this time from the perspective of treating it as a planning meeting…

Jenny: “Ok guys, let's circle up for the morning standup. Who would like to start us off?”

Joe: “I’ll go. Yesterday I tested the ability to add items to the shopping cart and it looks good. I still have a bit left to do, though, so today I’ll be testing the ability to remove items from the shopping cart and update the quantities of existing items. It looks like the product review story is ready to go so I’m going to plan to start that after I finish the shopping cart story.”

Sue: “My turn. Yesterday I worked on tracking the inventory of items and added the functionality to automatically mark an item as out of stock when the last one is sold. There are a lot of tendrils with this one though so I’ll be working through those today. The biggest one is understanding what happens when an item has already been placed in one customer’s cart but then goes out of stock when another customer completes their purchase. I suppose I’m a bit blocked on this since I don’t know how to handle that case….in fact, I’m not even sure how to test for that.

Joe: “I can help you with that. I’ll be doing something similar with setting up test cases to track item quantities across individual carts so let’s sync up after the standup to see what we can come up with so we don’t duplicate our efforts.”

Jenny: “Let’s also grab Dave this morning and pose this question to him. As our Product Owner, he may have already considered the case when a customer adds a product to their cart but doesn’t check out immediately and what impact that can have on inventory.  Maybe we're thinking about this all wrong and the idea is to deduct the item from inventory as soon as it’s in the cart. Let’s circle up with him this morning and get an answer before we go too deeply.”

Sue: “That sounds great, guys. Let’s do that.”

Pedro: “Ok, I suppose that leaves me. Yesterday I wrapped up the data import of the next batch of new products and started work on importing our old customer contact list into the new app. I was able to import the raw records pretty easily but this data is pretty messy, so I’ll be working today to figure out the best way to clean up the data and remove any duplicates. Joe, you mentioned that you were going to move on to the product review story today? Please let me know before you do…product reviews are always tied to customers and I’ll be truncating the customer’s table pretty frequently today as I try to get this import process sorted out. Please give me a heads up before you start so I can warn you each time I truncate it…otherwise you’re going to have a hard time getting anywhere with reviews when I’m constantly deleting your customers out from under you.”

What’s Different?

This is the same team, the same product, and the same day. They’re even describing the same pieces of work they’ll be tackling. So what’s different? Rather than just giving a simple status update for each item currently in progress, the team dove deeper into their actual plans for their work for the day which uncovered several opportunities for them to sync up and work more effectively together. In fact, in Pedro’s case this additional detail let him spot a potential problem where he and Joe would interfere with one another so they could plan accordingly.

By turning the Daily Scrum from a simple status meeting into an actual planning meeting for that day, the team was able coordinate much more effectively on the work in progress and significantly increase the odds that they can complete all of the work they planned for the current sprint.

How Do You Get There?

The shift from treating the Daily Scrum as a status meeting to treating it as a planning meeting is a powerful but subtle one, so it’s not always obvious how a team can do so. But, here are a few tips that can help.

1. As the Scrum Master, discourage the team from reporting their status directly to you. The Daily Scrum is for the team’s benefit, not yours, so you’ll need to help your team understand this. If a team member seems to be looking at you while giving their update, try looking away to the Scrum board. This will communicate that you should not be the focus for the Daily Scrum and that the content should instead focus on the work represented on the board.
2. Help the team learn to facilitate the Daily Scrum on their own without your prodding. At the very least, this means that the individual members of the team can keep the meeting moving without a need for you to call on each member. If your team struggles with this, then try to resist the urge to call on each member of the team simply to avoid an awkward silence between updates. If the silence is allowed to grow long enough between updates eventually someone will step in to fill the void. Once this has happened a few times the team will become much more adept at keeping the pace moving and avoiding these gaps.
3. Although the Scrum Guide doesn’t explicitly specify what time of day the Daily Scrum should take place, teams that hold their Daily Scrums in the morning are much more likely to treat this ceremony as a planning opportunity than those teams who hold this ceremony in the afternoon. When a team meets for their Daily Scrum in the morning they have the entire day in front of them and are more likely to be in a planning mindset. But when a team meets in the afternoon the bulk of the day has passed so there’s little planning to be done. These teams are more likely to focus on the work already performed day and thus shift the meeting to a mere status report. Although this isn’t always possible, try to hold the Daily Scrum in the morning so your team is in a planning state of mind when they meet.
4. Perhaps one of the simplest ways to coach your team away from treating the Daily Scrum as a simple status meeting is to discourage them from reporting on their recent work, altogether. The Reverse Standup, an alternative format for the Daily Scrum, was created to do just that. This format moves the “What did I do yesterday?” question to the end of question set and even makes it optional to downplay its significance. Try this format out with your team to help shift their focus from reporting on work that’s already happened to planning for work that’s next in the queue.

Building a Cohesive Team

The Daily Scrum is simultaneously one of the simplest and the most powerful aspects of the Scrum framework. But teams who insist on using it as a mere status meeting are barely scratching the surface of its potential. Encourage your team to make the shift to treating the Daily Scrum as a true daily planning meeting to help them work together more cohesively and deliver great products along the way.

Want to see more about how to make textbook agile work on real teams? Check out my course, Agile in the Real World, for tips and techniques for making agile really work in your organization.

Don't have a Pluralsight membership yet? Try the entire Pluralsight course catalog free for 10 days here.

Most teams are familiar with the morning standup, or the classic scrum ritual that gives teams the opportunity to sync up and plan their work for the day.  For many teams, the morning standup is the bread and butter of their scrum process.

But every once in a awhile a team tries to move their standup to the afternoon.  The reasons always sound legitimate:

“Not everyone gets here at the same time, so we'll just hold our standup in the afternoon.  That way everyone can attend.”

or

“Mornings are when we're most productive…we don't want to interrupt that with another meeting.  Let's just have the standup in the afternoon.”

As valid as these reasons sound afternoon standups have a tendency to be less useful than morning standups, but the reasons why aren't always clear.  Let's take a look at why.

The Ritual Suffers

Morning standups create a nice ritual for your team.  Everyone trickles by 9 o'clock, checks their email, and gets their morning cup of joe.  But, at 9:30 everyone filters into the team room and it's time for the standup.  After a quick standup the team starts their day for real.  The 9:30 standup is the signal for the day to start.

On the other hand, even though afternoon standups are still scheduled at the same time every they are much less likely to start at the same time every day.  This is because by the afternoon the day is much more likely to have gone awry.  Maybe tasks have taken longer than expected so not everyone is ready.  Perhaps a fire has much of the team too distracted to make the original time.  Or, even if all of the team is available, maybe other meetings outside of the team have ran long and the team's normal meeting space isn't available.  Now the team has to hustle to find a space that can accommodate them for their already late standup.

Standups Last Longer

No one likes a long standup.  In fact, one of the most common complaints from new scrum teams is

“Our standups always last at least 45 minutes.”

All standups are susceptible to this but afternoon standups are particularly so.

Think of how you feel in the morning:  You're energized for the day, you've had a fresh cup of coffee, and you're ready to tackle that sticky problem from yesterday.

Now, think of how you usually feel in the afternoon:  You've just had lunch.  You've already been at work for 5 hours, and all you want is a reason to sit down and take a break for a bit.  The afternoon standup is that reason.

And, once everyone has sat down, the standup begins to drag.

Your New Status Meeting

But, the most insidious problem of all with afternoon standups is much more subtle.

Standups should have two goals…

1. Identify blockers so they can be brought to light and removed.
2. Allow the team to sync up and plan their work for the day.

Nowhere in that list is a goal for the team to report the status of their current work in progress.  That's not the purpose of the standup…that's the purpose of the scrum board.

Morning standups are very conducive to these goals since they encourage the team to identify blockers early in the day and to synchronize the day's work before they get started on the wrong path.

But afternoon standups share neither of these traits.  Although the same blockers might exist in the afternoon as they did in the morning, team members are less likely to bring them to light since they may mistakenly believe they're close to solving them.  Even if they do, the other team members are likely too deep into their own tasks to volunteer much help.  In addition, since the individual team members have already started their work for the day there's no opportunity to synchronize the work as a team…everything has already begun.

With both of these options off of the table only one thing is left to talk about in an afternoon standup…status.  When held in the afternoon the focus of the standup naturally shifts to what each team member has accomplished so far that day.  Rather than providing the opportunity for the team to clear their own way and plan the day's work ahead, the standup simply devolves into yet another status meeting.

Try It and See

The differences between afternoon and morning standups are subtle but the results can vary dramatically.  If your team is currently using afternoon standups and something just doesn't feel quite right then give morning standups a try.  The difference may surprise you.

Want to see more about how to make textbook agile work on real teams? Check out my course, Agile in the Real World, for tips and techniques for making agile really work in your organization.

Don't have a Pluralsight membership yet? Try the entire Pluralsight course catalog free for 10 days here.

Few teams doubt the value of the daily standup.  Three simple questions, each designed to help the team plan their next day's work
based on the current situation.

1. What did I do yesterday?
2. What am I doing today?
3. What's in my way?

The daily standup is one of the most powerful tools in the scrum toolbox, so powerful in fact that when teams move beyond scrum they often still retain the standup as one of their core practices. But what's the real goal of this meeting?  It's to identify areas where the team is blocked so we can get those blockers out of the way.  If this is the case, though, then why do we save blockers until end of each person's update when the team has already started to shift their focus to the next person in line?  In fact, not only has the team started shift their attention, but the person giving the update has often already started to check out!  How many times have you heard a someone simply mumble something about “and no blockers.” when you know for a fact they do?  This is because most people are ready to be done with their update by the last question and just want to move on.  Unfortunately though, they've just skipped the most important part.

Meet the Reverse Standup

The Reverse Standup takes the same three questions as the classic standup and turns them on their head.  The result is that the most important questions are tackled first.

1. What's in my way?
2. What am I doing today?
3. What did I do yesterday?

What's in my way?

This is our classic “what's blocking me question”, and the bread-and-butter of the daily standup.  Think about it like this, if someone is blocked then the next question is irrelevant.  Whatever is blocking your team has to be solved before we can move forward, so we need to start there.

What am I doing today?

Assuming nothing is blocking a team member this question becomes the most important.  This is the information the team uses to build their plan for the day so we tackle it immediately after any blockers.

What did I do yesterday?

Forget for a moment that the classic standup leads off with this question.  Instead think back to your last standup and remember what each person answered for this question.  Now remind yourself that the daily standup is a planning meeting, not a status meeting.  Keeping that in mind, think about how useful knowing what each person did yesterday was to your planning?  Not very, eh? It's not that what someone did yesterday isn't important, its just that it's usually not that useful as input to to creating our plan for today.

Sure there are exceptions: Sally resolved an issue with the test deployment that had been blocking John for the past 2 days, or Steve finished the icon set that Sally had been waiting add to her own feature.  But these are the exceptions rather than the rule.  The vast majority of the time “what I did yesterday” just doesn't impact what we're doing today. And, when it does, it's already reflected on the scrum board.

So what happens to this question?  Well, once a team finds the flow of a Reverse Standup this question starts to feel less relevant.  As a result, many teams eventually make this question optional which results in it being skipped during most standups.  The exception is that the question is only answered when it's relevant to moving the team forward today.

Give it a Try

If you're finding blockers aren't being called out as often as they should, or if you'd just like to breathe some life into a stale standup, give the Reverse Standup a try.  You may be surprised with the result

Want to see more about how to make textbook agile work on real teams? Check out my course, Agile in the Real World, for tips and techniques for making agile really work in your organization.

Don't have a Pluralsight membership yet? Try the entire Pluralsight course catalog free for 10 days here.