How to Facilitate the Daily Scrum 

Knowledge from this video: Facilitation Format 1) The three questions: Each developer answers: 1) What did I do since the last Daily Scrum? 2) What will I do today? 3) Are there impediments preventing me form doing my work? Potential Pitfalls / Challenges: a) Hard to stay within the time-box of 15 min in case of a large team. b) It can devolve into a status update c) Lose focus on collaboration toward the Sprint Goal. To avoid pitfalls, one of the approaches is to use team-based open ended questions: 1) What is the progress toward our Sprint Goal? 2) What is the next step for us to move forward toward the Sprint Goal? 3) What impediments are we facing and how can we approach these impediments? 4) What or Who do we need to help us make this decision? Facilitation Format 2) Walking the Board or Walking the Wall: Targets the work being done rather than the individuals. Potential Pitfalls / Challenges: a) Team may forget about the Sprint Goal, especially if they are only focused on the specific work-items that are in-progress or blocked. To avoid pitfalls, a) Use a follow-up question: How are we doing toward achieving our Sprint Goal? b) Make the Sprint Goal visible on the board. Facilitation Format 3) Using flow metrics in a Daily Scrum How much and how long work items are in-progress? 1) Work In Progress (WIP) 2) Work Item Age Format similar to 'Walking the Board'. Teams use flow metrics to steer their conversations. E.g. Teams can use an 'Aging Work in Progress Chart' (analytics.actionableagile.com) Potential Pitfalls / Challenges: a) Being focused on flow of work can distract team from asking important question like the value of work towards the Sprint Goal. b) Team may forget about the Sprint Goal. To avoid pitfalls, always check: a) Is this work still valuable? b) How are we doing towards meeting our Sprint Goal? Above are some of the ways to facilitate the Daily Scrum and there are many. Team should experiment as they see necessary and choose what works best for them. Scrum Guide on Daily Scrum: "The Developers can select whatever structure and techniques they want, as long as their Daily Scrum focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal and produces an actionable plan for the next day of work. This creates focus and improves self-management." If you are still facing in-effective Daily Scrum, make use of the Scrum Values from the Scrum Guide and the facilitation principles (www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-competencies/facilitation).

Enjoy learning with your team.