We started this series on remote agile with looking into practices and tools; we explored virtual Liberating Structures, and how to master Zoom. We had a look at common remote agile anti-patterns; we analyzed remote Retrospectives, Sprint Plannings as well as remote Sprint Reviews based on Liberating Structures. This eighth article now looks into supporting a distributed Development Team organizing a remote Daily Scrum.
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The purpose of the Daily Scrum is clearly described in the Scrum Guide — no guessing is necessary:
The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team. The Daily Scrum is held every day of the Sprint. At it, the Development Team plans work for the next 24 hours. This optimizes team collaboration and performance by inspecting the work since the last Daily Scrum and forecasting upcoming Sprint work. The Daily Scrum is held at the same time and place each day to reduce complexity.
The Daily Scrum is an internal meeting for the Development Team. If others are present, the Scrum Master ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting.
Daily Scrums improve communications, eliminate other meetings, identify impediments to development for removal, highlight and promote quick decision-making, and improve the Development Team’s level of knowledge. This is a key inspect and adapt meeting.
Source: Scrum Guide 2017.
The Daily Scrum is an essential event for inspection and adaption, run by the Development Team, and guiding it for the next 24 hours on its path to achieving the Sprint Goal. The Daily Scrum is hence the shortest planning horizon in Scrum and thus mandatory.
The live virtual class on “Remote Agile” addresses tips, tricks, and tools for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Product Owners on how to facilitate agile events effectively. The training class is organized in three blocks of 2.5 hours each within two weeks. You can book your seat right here:
Learn more: 📅 Distributed Agile Training — A Live Virtual Masterclass.
Contrary to popular belief, the Daily Scrum’s 15-minute timebox is not intended to solve all the issues addressed during the event. It is about creating transparency, thus triggering the inspection. If an adaption of the Sprint plan or the Sprint Backlog, for example, is required, the Development Team is free to handle the resulting issues at any time. In my experience, most Daily Scrum issues result from a misunderstanding of this core principle. We hence look at the Daily Scrum’s two parts separately.
This is the 15-minute time-box where the members of the Development Team inspect the progress towards achieving the Sprint Goal since the previous remote Daily Scrum. To structure this part of the remote Daily Scrum, the Sprint Guide suggests a non-mandatory information-sharing pattern — the three questions —, that pretty well translates to a remote set-up.
One way of applying this pattern to a remote Daily Scrum is to run a virtual Mad Tea to collect and distribute information from all developers rapidly among the team members. Of course, we cannot recreate two concentric circles of attendees facing each other. However, what we can do is use the set of questions to create a prompt—a half-sentence that the team members shall complete—and the chat channel to create a quick picture of the team’s sentiment.
As the moderator, prepare the necessary prompts in advance regarding the progress of the team towards the Sprint Goal, for example, “Today, I will support the Development Team by contributing…” Then post that prompt to the chat and ask the participants to add their answer(s) but not to hit enter. That is done simultaneously by all attendees when the moderator asks for it. This way, the Development Team can generate insight synchronously at a rapid pace, identifying potential areas where more collaboration is needed to ensure that the Scrum Team is meeting the Sprint Goal.
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Let us move on to the part of the remote Daily Scrum, where the Development Team collaborates on solving issues that might impede its ability to achieve the Sprint Goal. Consider the following microstructures for the second phase of the remote Daily Scrum, when Development Team members may need individual support, or where the whole team needs to decide how to adapt in the light of new learnings:
Learn more about remote Liberating Structures: Remote Agile (Part 2): Virtual Liberating Structures.
Two Liberating Structures microstructures can support a remote Daily Scrum and particularly its second phase: 1-2-4-All, and Lean Coffee:
There are plenty of Daily Scrum anti-patterns in general. However, I want to point at a few anti-patterns that are particularly relevant for a remote Daily Scrum:
Read more: Daily Scrum Anti-Patterns: 20 Ways to Improve.
Daily Scrum events — remote or not — are essential to a team’s self-organization and, consequently, its ability to achieve the Sprint Goal. While the first phase, the 15-minute time-box, is relatively straight-forward, the second, the problem-solving phase requires more effort on the side of the moderators, the Scrum Master or Development Team members, in a remote setup. Nevertheless, given the right level of training and support, also the second phase can be fully embraced by a distributed Scrum team.
What kind of a remote Daily Scrum event have you supported? Please share it with us in the comments.
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At the end of March, we ran a Remote Agile Practices & Tools live virtual class with about 30 participants from all over Europe, the Eastern Seaboard, and Canada. The participants agreed on recording it and make it available to the agile community. We edited the recording slightly; for example, we removed the waiting time during the exercise timeboxes. Otherwise, the video accurately reflects how one way of collaborating with a distributed team using Zoom breakout rooms may work.
Except for three teaching blocks of about 20 minutes in total, the whole Remote Agile Practices & Tools class of 2:45 hours comprised of interactive work:
If you have any questions regarding the class, please let me know via the comments, or contact me in the Hands-on Agile Slack community.
If the video snippet does not play, please watch the video on Youtube: Remote Agile (1) Replay: Practices and Tools for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Product Owners.
Remote Agile (Part 1): Practices & Tools for Scrum Masters & Agile Coaches.
Remote Agile (Part 2): Virtual Liberating Structures.
Remote Agile (Part 6): Sprint Planning with Distributed Teams.
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