How to handle folks who do not attend Scrum regularly

There must be a reason why people are not attending the Daily Scrum. Maybe it's because they do not get any value out of it, maybe people do not know what to say, maybe they feel not really part of the team, whatever it is you have to find the reason.
Until you figure out why people are not attending you are just guessing or forcing them and as you mention that does not work.

I would talk to them, ask questions and discuss honestly what is going on and then work with them.

ManishJ, I assume with 'do not attend Scrum' that you mean the Daily Scrum.

First let's look at the why and how of the Daily Scrum.

Why: In Scrum we want the Development Team to self-organize, to act on their own decisions but also to be responsibility for their actions. So my question is: How does your team self-orgainze if it doesn't leverage the possibility to do so.

How: The Daily Scrum is a daily just in time meeting were whole Dev Team gets together and plans (self-organizes) for the coming working day as a means of empirical process control. This is how they maximize their chances to reach the Sprint Goal.

My underlying question are the following:
1. Does the company allow self-organization
2. Has the Dev Team understood the power of self-organization
3. Are you as a Scrum Master enabling 1. and 2.

Don't make them do something, make them understand 'why' it is important and then assist them to do it right.

HTH,
Ralph

Cesario - I will surely try to more inputs from the folks and will see if I can help them anywhere and then they attend daily Scrum.

Ralph - In our project there is different scenario, we have deve team, BAs and QA folks in one scrum team. So they do self organize and even they have full independect to do this. But as teams are from different companies so they hesitate to share the reasons and where it makes SM's job difficult in resolving their issue.

ManishJ,

On top of what Ralph and Cesario has suggested, maybe he hasn't found the value of Daily Scrum because he hasn't been trained on Scrum before. Perhaps you would like to spend 30 minutes to quickly explain him the underlying principles of Scrum and all of its ceremonies.

I agree with others that say to do a "Five Why's" and find out what the root problem is. Does this issue ever come up in your retrospectives? If so, what is said? If not, why do you think it never comes up?

I agree with Charles. There is an ancillary problem that needs to be addressed. The "Five Whys" is an excellent team exercise to determine a problem's root cause. It will also get the team talking about issues which is always good.

Hi Manish,

I'd like to propose a different approach: will you share with us why you think it's a problem for this team not to attend their daily scrum regularly ?

I'm not asking you to repeat the Scrum guide here, but to share the evidences that you see, not only on a daily basis but on a sprint basis too.

And once you've shared these evidence with us, what if you share them with your team and ask it for help to understand why you should not care.

Cheers