Product Owner allowed to participate in daily scrum?

To attend and to participate is not the same.
Don't forget the aim of the Daily Scrum.
It's a key inspection point for the Dev Team to synchronize their work and forecast the next 24 hours.
IMHO, the PO can attend, in order to help the Dev Team by providing some usefull informations, but he isn't expected to participate.
Beware of having people outside the Dev Team in the Daily Scrum. TJust by their presence, they will change the Daily Scrum. If they are managers, the risk is they turn the Daily Scrum into a "report" meeting.
Only the Dev Team members are required for the Daily Scrum.

> So now I am not sure if it is mandatory that the Product Owner
> (and stakeholders) do not participate in the daily scrums.

Yes, it is mandatory that they do not participate in Daily Scrums. But as Olivier rightly says, "To attend and to participate is not the same".

> And in another section:
> "As the product owner, you can help resolve the situation by inviting
> stakeholders to the sprint review meetings and the Daily Scrums."

It's reasonable for a PO to invite stakeholders to a Sprint Review, and the Guide makes that clear. But inviting them to the Development Team's Daily Scrums? That's like inviting people to a party you haven't even been invited to yourself.

This discussion reflects old 2016 version if the Scrum Guide. The 2017 version indicates that "other" could participate in the Daily Scrum event:

“The Daily Scrum is an internal meeting for the Development Team. If others are present, the Scrum Master ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting.”

So " Yes, it is mandatory that they <PO-s> do not participate in Daily Scrums. " , thankfully, is outdated in realization that banning good resources is not optimal.

Scrum does not say anything about linguistics of  "attend" and "participate" but has Scrum Muster to ensure disruption is avoided.

So " Yes, it is mandatory that they <PO-s> do not participate in Daily Scrums. " , thankfully, is outdated in realization that banning good resources is not optimal.

Yakov - what do you mean it is outdated and banning good resources is not optimal?

I believe the Product Owner is covered by that "if others are present" statement. So they can attend, but not participate, as the Product Owner is not part of the Development Team.

Hi Sergio Miguel

Daily Standup is used for 

1. To know the progress on an individual in the team

2. And the entire team would know the progress of a sprint

I think PO involvement in Daily standup is not mandatory however not prohibited. 

He/She is the optional invitee, if the PO wants to see the progress of sprint, can join the daily stand up. 

Ripandeep,

Please recognize that there are several inaccuracies and errors in your post:

• It is not the Daily Standup.   It is the Daily Scrum.   This is not an insignificant difference.
  
   
  
  There are reasons why one should use the term Daily Scrum.   Proper terminology is one.   Also, referring to the event as a "Standup" risks the possibility it will be conducted as a status event, and not as a point in time for the Development Team to assess progress toward the Sprint Goal and identify the plan for that day
  
   
• The Daily Scrum is not used to know progress of an individual on the Development Team 
  
   
• The Product Owner is indeed prohibited from being involved in Daily Scrum discussions, unless the Development Team inquires directly with the PO
  
   
• The PO should be able to assess the state of a sprint at any point in time, if sprint information is being radiated properly.   The Daily Scrum should be one of several ways for a PO to see sprint progress

@Timothy 

Apologies for using SAFE terminology here. I also understand the fact that Daily Scrum should be used for the status event. 

However, my aim was not something that you have interpreted. I was not saying that the scrum team would assess an individual's work or progress of the sprint. 

Rather this was to encourage the entire team that all are together and working together where everyone speaks about their work(obviously three checkpoints).

Some time development team would set push back or not interested in ceremonies for any reason. As a scrum master, you need to look into this situation and encourage the team and tell them the business values of each of the ceremony. 

The most important thing is as a scrum master how you could facilitate/serve the team towards achieving their goals.

Maybe my way of expressing the previous post was different but I have shared some of my experiences. 

Now coming to PO involvement in Daily Scrum, in my opinion, PO is not strictly restricted to join the Daily Scrum however PO does not suppose to intervene in the Daily Scrum. 

Thanks

In some projects, I have played the role of PO and  "Attended" Daily scrum meetings. I just listen in.   

There are times,  that the PO needs to listen in as  the  product is reaching certain critical  /Maturity  levels and its good to hear what happening with DT and if need be inform SM  to help out with direction within the team and org.  

when must product owner be present at daily scrum ? choose best answer .

a)when the scrum master ask them to attend.

b)when they need to represent the stakeholder's point of view.

c)when there are impediments to discuss

d)When the PO is actively working on items from the sprint backlog.

d)When the PO is actively working on items from the sprint backlog.

So bottomline, PO can attend the DSU on invitation but not participate except asked to...right?

So bottomline, PO can attend the DSU on invitation but not participate except asked to...right?

The Daily Stand Up is not a Scrum event.  That is a eXtreme Programming artifact. 

The Daily Scrum is a Scrum event and it is for and run by the Developers.  They can choose to run it in any way as long as the focus is on the progress towards achieving the Sprint Goal.  This the most relevant excerpt from the Scrum Guide for this thread.

The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team. To reduce complexity, it is held at the same time and place every working day of the Sprint. If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers.

There is no other mention of who can attend in the Scrum Guide.  Nor is there anything that says no one other than the Developers can attend.  However, since the focus on progress towards the Sprint Goal and is an event for the Developers to adapt their plans to achieve the Sprint Goal, no one but the those actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog should be involved in the discussions. 

I highly recommend this by two PST's from Scrum.org:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwlshrYQv1w

This is an issue scrum.org has to address. Personally, I think it's okay for the Product Owner to attend so long he does so in a capacity that doesn't interfere with or there to clarify minor issues.

For examination/certification purposes I think scrum.org should have this settled in black and white print.

Hello,

For several assignments in different companies, the PO has played an active part in the daily. This is important because it allows us to improve 'inspect', as he keeps us up to date with what's happened the day before. It also allows us to 'adapt', as the team may need to adapt its work according to his feedback. 

In a nutshell. I know that in theory the PO can only be invited and can only speak if asked, but in practice he takes part in the daily like the devs. So much so that it would be difficult to do the daily in his absence. Yes, the PO often has functional knowledge and takes part in customer meetings that the SM can't always attend, so it's normal for us to give us feedback.

What do you think?

If you are intended to practise Scrum according to the 2020 version of Scrum guide, then no, PO is not required to attend daily scrum, and IS NOT ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE UNLESS INVITED BY DEVELOERS. But Daily Scrum is an open session so anyone, including PO and stake holder can OBSERVE IT.

Product owner can and should participate in Daily Scrum if he or she is a developer, combining both roles.

This aspect is very clear in the Scrum Guide, so there are no buts and ifs about it.

If you are practicing Scrum based on older versions of Scrum guide or outside the boundaries of Scrum guide(based on the provisions of "Agile Product Management with Scrum" from Roman Pichler for example) then PO might be able to participate in Daily Scrum or "Daily Standup", as some practitioners who don't follow Scrum guide prefer to call this "ceremony"(Scrum guide does not use word "ceremony" either, they are called "events"). And in some variations of Scrum PO attendance can be mandatory.

PLEASE BE ADVICED that creators of the scrum.org and founders of Scrum guide are against practicing the Scrum which is not based on Scrum guide. They are also copyright holders and trademark owners for Scrum; and in theory have a right to object any sale of services, teaching, process or operation which calls itself "Scrum" but is not based on Scrum guide.

However in practice there are many practitioners who operate the versions of Scrum which are deviating, or are in the direct contradiction with a Scrum guide, and this issue is ignored by Scrum.org community, which equals silent consent. So my final advice would be to do as you consider more convenient for creating value in your organisation; it would be interesting to examine how the daily participation of PO at daily scrum and making his presence mandatory can change the outcomes of the Sprint, and may be direction of the whole project, if you will be so kind to share the outcome.

But out of courtesy for Scrum creators please don't call "Scrum" the operations which are in contradiction with a scrum guide . For example if you decide to make PO's presence in daily Scrum mandatory, then its actually wise to call the event "daily standup" instead of "daily scrum", and also use some different name for a whole operation. Like "Unbounded Scrum", or "Ceremony Scrum", or else, so there would be clear difference and transparency about consequences of each practice.

I don't want to get into a controversy, but if what you're saying is true, no company in France could claim to be doing Scrum.... which would backfire on the designers. You can only implement Scrum very gradually. 

Apart from that, it's a good point for you: these days we talk about "daily scrum" because I don't dare say "daily standup meeting" any more, as I find it hard to check in a call conference or on the phone that everyone's are stand up in front of your computer ;) ;) Almost all companies do remote scrum and in fact there's almost nothing to say about it in scrum guide... except that it's not recommended ;)  (to do sprint review remotely)...

To come back to the question of the PO who automatically comes to the daily and talks, to simplify things I'd say that it depends on what he's doing and how the actions are distributed.

Christophe Meyer what you say highlights certain crisis with Scrum.

It is caused by few provisions in the Scrum guide. Let me quote

"Changing the core design or ideas of Scrum, leaving out elements, or not following the rules of Scrum, covers up problems and limits the benefits of Scrum, potentially even rendering it useless."

and

"Scrum is free and offered in this Guide. The Scrum framework, as outlined herein, is immutable. While implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices."

I think it was a mistake to include such a strong statements in the Scrum guide, but they are there.

As you wrote correctly, possibly only the 1% of the scrum practitioners use the framework  strictly   according to the Scrum guide; there are many Scrum practitioners who don't even know that Scrum guide exists, and had learned Scrum from other sources(who often don't reference Scrum guide).

People at this forum and scrum.org community in general refuse to discuss this issue, not to mention the idea to transparently inspect, and adapt the situation with Scrum

I have tried to discuss the aspect at LinkedIN where I am more actively discussing the pros and cons of operating Scrum outside the boundaries of Scrum guide. One of the opponents simply referred to the copyright notice at the bottom of the Scrum guide, which is indeed saying that:

© 2020 Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland This publication is offered for license under the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative Commons, accessible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. By utilizing this Scrum Guide, you acknowledge and agree that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative Commons.

 By American, and presumably international law, "Permission is free to share with attribution. It doesn’t license to let others take credit or alter and claim it is the original, or resale it even if altered as a derivative…. And seem to be conflating aspects with registered trademarks" as my opponent told me.

 In other words practicing or teaching Scrum in contradiction to what creators of Scrum has written in the Scrum Guide, is, in theory, not legal.

  Of course there was not a single litigation about this, but growing frustration among practitioners and misunderstandings between different and conflicting versions of "Scrum" which are currently circulated at the market, some litigation may actually arise.

 How it will effect developers and companies who are implementing Scrum? I don't know, but it will not be nice. In my opinion solution can be to accept the fact that Scrum is also a product, and then to transparently inspect its practise, and adapt its theory.

The question "Is the PO allowed...." has some negative connotations suggesting that the Developers might not welcome PO presence on the Daily Scrum. 

The Daily Scrum is for the Developers. However, when the relations on the team are healthy and everybody has a good understanding of the Daily Scrum, I don't see why the developers would not allow the PO to join as a passive participant. Although if everything is going as planned, the Developers themselves are enough to create any aspect of the Increment and achieve the Sprint Goal. 

But let's also remember, per the Scrum Guide: "The entire Scrum Team is accountable for creating a valuable, useful Increment every Sprint"

To me the Scrum Guide is clear : the Daily Scrum is for the developers only (except when the PO or Scrum Master are also developers). As stated in the Scrum Guide 2020 :

The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team.

Older versions of the guide allowed the presence of others with strict conditions (2017) :

The Daily Scrum is an internal meeting for the Development Team. If others are present, the Scrum Master ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting.

So for me, no PO at the daily Scrum (I allowed it, and quickly regretted it).



But let's forget the Scrum Guide a few minutes here : I hear often that for the sakes of efficiency and practicality teams allow their PO to come to the daily Scrum to answer critical questions and whatnot or simply to listen. I would strongly advise against it for different reasons, the number one being that in 90% of cases the PO won't behave.



Answering the questions from the developers during the Daily Scrum sounds practical, but to me that's not the case. Apart from the very rare occurences where a short answer will satisfy everyone, participants will be tempted to find solutions on the spot. Discussions will spiral out of control and that will quickly derail the event, making it last far more than 15mn. Plus, the developers lose some autonomy as they will expect many answers from their PO.

Best case scenario : the daily scrum ends up within 15mn but becomes tiresome for the Scrum Master (and the team) as he spends a lot of energy to refocus useless discussions and control the timing.



The PO who "only listens", to me is also a bad idea. Because he won't (with rare exceptions). The temptation is simply too big to resist. If he hears something and he has the answer he will give his opinion. And in the rare cases where the PO has self-control (or had excellent coaching) the developers will be tempted to address him some questions. Once again the Daily Scrum timing is at risk, and lots of efforts are needed to keep it focused...for nothing...



Because in the end, the questions should be quickly noted during the Daily Scrum then the Developers have all day to discuss them with their PO.







 

On this topic...

Developers have all day to discuss them with their PO

If Developers have questions, or challenges, or impediments... waiting for the Daily Scrum potentially means waiting up to a day before raising them. A day is a long time when we are talking about Sprint cycles that are less than a calendar month.

Using the Daily Scrum for this type of clarity catch up also erodes the purpose of the Daily Scrum as a planning session to inspect progress on SG and adapt the SB and/or plan for the day. If questions for the PO come up during the DS, that can be part of the day's plan ("talk to PO about x").