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Is 15 Minutes enough for Daily Standup in Scrum?

Last post 02:10 pm August 8, 2022 by Ian Mitchell
4 replies
02:45 am August 8, 2022

With my experiences on 15 Minutes for Daily Standup in Scrum, I find it's difficult to cover the current progress of every team member that works on Scrum tasks. Some team members want to cover their progress in detail which are not getting possible. Not fair to interrupt and move to next person. Any thoughts?


11:43 am August 8, 2022

The Daily Scrum is not a place for everyone to update everyone else on their progress or status. It's not about either the individuals or their statuses. The Daily Scrum is a planning meeting. People's progress and the current state of work should be visible in the Sprint Backlog, however the team chooses to visualize and manage that artifact. The team can use that information to plan the next step or steps that they will take over the course of the day to get closer to achieving the Sprint Goal.

Exactly what this looks like varies by team. For example, one team that I've worked with that tended to have short Daily Scrums used a Kanban board to visualize their Sprint Backlog. If the work was something that was directly linked to achieving the Sprint Goal, it was color-coded. The team worked from right (the rightmost column was Done work) to left (the leftmost column was unstarted work) and planned what they would need to do to move each work card at least one column to the right before the end of the day, making sure that everyone knew if their individual time or skills would be needed to make that happen. There are a number of effective ways to run a Daily Scrum, though.


12:11 pm August 8, 2022

Rather than focusing on past progress details, how can they change their conversations to discuss a plan for what work needs focus in the next 24 hours to get them closer towards the Sprint Goal?


12:29 pm August 8, 2022

There's a children's book called give a mouse a cookie.  It says that if you give a mouse a cookie, he'll ask for a glass of milk.  The story grows from there, giving and asking.

If you extend the session to 16 minutes, you'll be at 30 minutes eventually.

Teach the team to keep it at 15.  Just ask the question - "what do we need to plan for the next 24 hours to make progress toward the sprint goal."  That doesn't require the 3 questions or status, just making a plan, which you can do in 15 minutes..


02:10 pm August 8, 2022

With my experiences on 15 Minutes for Daily Standup in Scrum, I find it's difficult to cover the current progress of every team member that works on Scrum tasks. Some team members want to cover their progress in detail which are not getting possible. Not fair to interrupt and move to next person. Any thoughts?

What does that tell you about the quality of their collaboration during the rest of the working day?

The Daily Scrum is not when the agile thing happens, with people somehow shoehorning everything into it.

A good Daily Scrum is 15 minutes out of a busy day where the Developers stand aside and say "where are we now in terms of our progress to our Sprint Goal commitment? Where should we be this time tomorrow?"


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