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!
Great post Dave! I see Glass Silo's building all the time. I think it's important to not only keep the team in check, but as the Scrum Master, it's important to keep yourself in check by ensuring that team collaboration is happening.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading more about your Agile knowledge!
Sonal-
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! This is as much about the Scrum Master keeping his/her ego in check as it is about making sure the team collaborates. In that way, the Scrum Master should be like a wedding planner: if all goes well, people don't even notice you. (hmmm, maybe that's another blog post) :-)
Great post, Dave!
ReplyDeleteTo put a finer point on it I would say not only is the Daily Scrum not "strictly for the team to report their status to the Scrum Master" it's not for that at all. For one thing the ScrumMaster role is not one to which the team should be reporting things, with the exception of impediments. But definitely the Daily Scrum is not a perfunctory status reporting mechanism.
That said it's a problem I encounter frequently with new Scrum Teams and new ScrumMasters. One tip I give to new ScrumMasters is to break eye contact. If you aren't looking at the team member who's speaking they can't "report" to you. This is often awkward a first, but eventually the team members will look around to other team members for feedback.
I also encourage ScrumMaster's to break the habit of "running" the Daily Scrum. That is it shouldn't be the ScrumMaster asking each person in turn the 3 questions which is another anti-pattern I see a lot. Instead I will suggest ScrumMasters institute a "talking token"; a pen or some other small object that the team member who is talking can hold. The rule is you can only talk if you're holding the token and when you're done you give it to the next person AND it can't be someone directly adjacent to you. This does a few things. First it ensures that only one person is talking at a time and second people have to pay attention or when it comes to their turn to pass the token on they won't know who's already had it.
The key to all this, as you rightly explain, is that the Scrum is for the team to talk to eachother so everyone know's what everyone's doing and so they can judge as a team how they are progressing toward their sprint goal. That's what the Daily Scrum is for. Not so the ScrumMaster can check items off a list.
One final point. I usually am pretty strident about not having off topic discussions during the Daily Scrum. As a ScrumMaster I will listen to what everyone is saying and if I hear things straying away from the 3 questions I'll say something like, "is that a sidebar?" I've seen more than a few Daily Scrums derailed and the whole practice damaged by not staying on point.
Good points, Jimi. I like the idea of passing around the talking token. And I can confirm that the technique of breaking eye contact works. It's a great technique to change the speaker's focus elsewhere.
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