So, you’re practicing Scrum, are you? You’re having your Sprint Planning meetings, your Retrospectives? If nothing else, you’re having your Daily Standups, right? But what do those Standups look like?
I heard an interesting anecdote from a colleague the other day. It was about a Scrum Master at his work that they had dubbed “The Abusive Scrum Master.” The Abusive Scrum Master was zealous about the Scrum framework. He clearly knew the book information about Scrum and what the book said you should cover at the Daily Standup - the three questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you doing today?
- What impediments are you encountering?
He also knew that the book said the Standup should be time boxed to 15 minutes maximum. Each morning, the team would gather, and the Abusive Scrum Master would poll the team members, asking them to answer the three questions. In turn, each team member would answer the questions in a monotone voice, and the Abusive Scrum Master ticked off the burn-down hours on the sprint backlog. But if the team member started to talk about anything beyond the three questions, or any other team member started to ask a question, the Abusive Scrum Master would cut them off. As a result, the team members “checked out” during the standup. Each team member would sit, waiting their turn to be called on, staring at their papers. Yes, they had moved to just writing down their answers and reading them to the Abusive Scrum Master!
Eventually, the Abusive Scrum Master moved on and a new Scrum Master came in. At the first standup, it was clear one of the team members wasn’t listening to the updates. When the new Scrum Master mentioned it, the team member said “right, well, it’s not my turn.” This team had moved into the “Glass Silos.”
Have you seen it at your office? The “team” reports at their standup each day, you can see them, they’re standing right there, but there is no communication between team members. The only information flow is up and out of their silo to the Scrum Master. When that happens, it’s no longer a team…it’s a collection of individuals.
The Daily Standup is a meeting for collaborative information exchange. It's not strictly for the team to report their status to the Scrum Master. It’s for the team members to share information with each other about what they’re working on, what they’ve done, what issues they’re encountering. The Scrum Master should be listening, and gently nudging the conversation back on track if it gets too far into the weeds, but this is the time for the team to get up to speed with each other on what’s going on in the project today. When that dynamic gains steam, positive changes will follow. The team members will share insights with each other on how to solve issues. Sidebars for further collaboration will develop outside the standup (and this is good!). Your team will become more versatile because they can cover each other's work. And this all leads to the team's velocity increasing exponentially.
So take stock at your next Standup. Foster the collaboration, keep the team together, and shatter those Glass Silos!
