Three Questions at the Daily Scrum
A common practice used by Developers in many Scrum Teams is to answer the following three questions at the Daily Scrum:
- What did I do yesterday that helped us* meet the Sprint Goal?
- What will I do today to help us* meet the Sprint Goal?
- Do I see any impediment that prevents me or us* from meeting the Sprint Goal?
* I have replaced ‘Development Team’ with ‘us’ for clarity. The term Development Team was removed from Scrum in 2020 and we now refer to Developers instead.
The Scrum Guide included these three questions as an example of how to run the Daily Scrum. Many Scrum Teams adopt these automatically without appreciating that they are one way, not the only way or the best way to structure the Daily Scrum.
These three questions can cause the Daily Scrum to become too focused on individual updates rather than team collaboration. Team accountability and collaboration may be reduced if team members report their progress and individual plans without discussing how they can work together to achieve the Sprint Goals.
The three questions can also cause the Daily Scrum to become too routine and predictable. If team members answer the same questions daily, they may become less engaged and see it as a reporting rather than a planning event. A Scrum Master can detect this by looking at eye contact between Developers during the event and noticing the level of discussion that results. If each Developer shares, and then the event ends without any re-planning, then people are likely going through the motions, and the necessary adaption to the plan for the next 24 hours is not being made.
The Developers may get comfortable with the status quo and stop questioning the effectiveness of the Daily Scrum. When this happens, the Scrum Master may need to focus on the issues present and cause change to help improve the Daily Scrum.
To overcome these problems, Scrum teams can experiment with different formats for the Daily Scrum. For example, the team could focus on discussing how they can collaborate to achieve their goals, shift the focus to the visualisation of the Sprint Backlog and the plan’s constraints, or use different questions to stimulate more meaningful discussion. The key is to ensure that the Daily Scrum remains a valuable event for the Developers to plan and increase collaboration.