Team doesn't want to do a live DSM
Hi,
I was hoping you could give me some advice on this matter.
I am working as scrum master in a team.
Half of the team works on one place. The other half work remotely.
Every team member can decide on what hour he begins, so it's not possible to do a DSM in the beginning of the day.
The team uses Status Hero (statushero.com) as tool to organize their daily standups.
In Status Hero every team member fills in the three questions (what did I do yesterday? what am I doing today? do I have any impediments that prevent me from doing what I want to do?) offline.
Once everybody filled in their "report", Status Hero sends the summary to everyone.
So basically the daily standup meeting is happening totally "offline" and there is no interaction.
The team discusses technical issues amongst each other through Slack.
In the past the team tried out a DSM through video conf call, but they stepped away from that (and towards Status Hero) for the following reasons:
- the DSM interrupts them in their work
- there were technical issues (bad connection)
- team members were not paying attention
The team has been working with Status Hero quite some time now.
Meanwhile I stepped into the team.
I'm trying to convince the team to get away from Status Hero (or do a combination) for the following reasons:
- I miss the live interaction between the team members since Status Hero removes any live discussion (it's all happening offline)
- you don't see each other (I value body language a lot and you don't have that extra communication dimension if you're offline)
-I have the impression that the Status Hero reports are not read by everyone every day
- the technical issues there were in the past have been resolved
- as a scrum master I can make sure team members are paying attention
- the DSM is only max 15 minutes a day that all team members are focussed on the progress of the sprint
- since working with a lot of remote developers in my opinion a live DSM would increase the feeling that we're working as one team
I proposed to organise a live DSM in the next sprint but receive quite soms feisty (sometimes even emotional) reactions.
Things like:
- we did it in the past and it didn't work
- it works well with Status Hero? Why fix something that is not broken?
- we don't want live interaction since we discuss stuff on an individual basis and that works fine
I believe firmly that we should do a live DSM (with video conf call) but I am faced with a team that is even not willing to try it out (again). I am very doubtful of "pushing" this to the team but consider the developers' arguments detable (as they find my arguments debatable too).
What is your thought on this?
Thanks for any feedback!
Stijn
Hi Stijn,
Here's an interesting blog article on the issue. Hope it helps.
http://blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/your-daily-scrum-is-killing-your-team
There are many teams which do not have effective DSM but that does not mean that they will be aggressively against it. So it's better to start with analyzing and trying to understand the root cause behind this hatred. At times, DSM will turn out to be a meeting for micromanagement or few members will drill down the entire team's morale with some questions like "Is that all you did for the entire day?" or "Does it really take 3 hours to complete this task" or "Why did you do this task" etc without understanding DSM properly. Try to dig the issue first and sort it out which itself will help the team to take a step forward towards the daily meeting. Then, you can slowly help the team to involve more in DSM and get it effective.
Hi Stijn,
As a Scrum Master, you don't need to make sure they are pay attention. you have to teach them to time box in 15 mins and ensure they have Daily Scrum instead.
Anything they experienced in last sprint they should review in the Sprint Retrospective and may need to take action to improve in upcoming sprint.
Posted By Stijn De Maesschalck on 18 Nov 2016 01:33 PM
Hi,
I was hoping you could give me some advice on this matter.
I am working as scrum master in a team.
Half of the team works on one place. The other half work remotely.
Every team member can decide on what hour he begins, so it's not possible to do a DSM in the beginning of the day.
The team uses Status Hero (statushero.com) as tool to organize their daily standups.
In Status Hero every team member fills in the three questions (what did I do yesterday? what am I doing today? do I have any impediments that prevent me from doing what I want to do?) offline.
Once everybody filled in their "report", Status Hero sends the summary to everyone.
So basically the daily standup meeting is happening totally "offline" and there is no interaction.
The team discusses technical issues amongst each other through Slack.
In the past the team tried out a DSM through video conf call, but they stepped away from that (and towards Status Hero) for the following reasons:
- the DSM interrupts them in their work
- there were technical issues (bad connection)
- team members were not paying attention
The team has been working with Status Hero quite some time now.
Meanwhile I stepped into the team.
I'm trying to convince the team to get away from Status Hero (or do a combination) for the following reasons:
- I miss the live interaction between the team members since Status Hero removes any live discussion (it's all happening offline)
- you don't see each other (I value body language a lot and you don't have that extra communication dimension if you're offline)
-I have the impression that the Status Hero reports are not read by everyone every day
- the technical issues there were in the past have been resolved
- as a scrum master I can make sure team members are paying attention
- the DSM is only max 15 minutes a day that all team members are focussed on the progress of the sprint
- since working with a lot of remote developers in my opinion a live DSM would increase the feeling that we're working as one team
I proposed to organise a live DSM in the next sprint but receive quite soms feisty (sometimes even emotional) reactions.
Things like:
- we did it in the past and it didn't work
- it works well with Status Hero? Why fix something that is not broken?
- we don't want live interaction since we discuss stuff on an individual basis and that works fine
I believe firmly that we should do a live DSM (with video conf call) but I am faced with a team that is even not willing to try it out (again). I am very doubtful of "pushing" this to the team but consider the developers' arguments detable (as they find my arguments debatable too).
What is your thought on this?
Thanks for any feedback!
Stijn
Hi Stijn,
As a Scrum Master, we ensure the Daily Scrum held, Development Team members attend the meeting and teach the team time box in 15 mins. Any tools effective for the team, then we should open and respect.
If the Live DSM is not stable, it might cost more than 15 mins instead. That's our impediment we have to resolve.
Hope this help.
Cheers
Herbert
Posted By Nicko DeBeer on 20 Nov 2016 09:38 PM
Hi Stijn,
Here's an interesting blog article on the issue. Hope it helps.
http://blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/your-daily-scrum-is-killing-your-team
I agree. This article is a great read!
Anyway, to answer more on topic.
As a scrum master, our job is to facilitate and help the team. Make them learn from past mistakes/experiences and move on on the pad to improvement. One of the most important things I learned during my career is that every team/company is different and text book scum rarely applies. A more custom approach is almost always required.
I'm reading here that you are convincing your team to start with live DSM's, but all the reasons you are mentioning are based on you, while they should instead be based on the needs of the team.
- YOU miss the live interaction...
- YOU value body language...
- YOU have the impression...
- YOU will make sure everyone pays attention (How will you do this actually? Ask questions to A what B did? Be careful here that it does not look like micro management)
- In YOUR opinion..
I honestly believe you are looking at this in the wrong way. Their shouldn't be a need of convincing a scrum team to use a certain way of working. Instead, try to pinpoint issues during the sprint, discuss them during a retrospective and guide the team into making the correct decision. I reference again to the article mentioned above.
In this situation it looks like the team acknowledges the need of a daily standup and tried to solve past issues by doing it via a tool. The challenge for you now will be to recognise issues that a live daily standup can help preventing and make the team realise they need it. Do not forget that there is also a chance that there simply are no issues at current time. Monitoring this will be an on-going challenge, that's for sure.
Thank you for your feedback, everyone.
@Nicko @James thanks for bringing up the article. It certainly brought me new insights.