Daily Scrum – Avoid 19 Pitfalls of the Daily Scrum

We briefly look at what the Daily Scrum is and how it fits into the project management framework of Scrum.

To understand what can go wrong in a Daily Scrum, we first need to know what the purpose of this meeting is in the first place!

One of the most common pitfalls, that can quickly derail a Daily Scrum. If your Dailies are longer than 15 minutes, you have a problem! Learn how to fix it.

The Daily Scrum is not a status meeting. Yet many teams unintentionally turn it into one. If you don't take action against it, this will make your Daily Scrum meeting much less effective.

Not having a war room and being able to refer to tasks on your sprint backlog wall can be a problem. Learn why this is bad and how you can fix it.

Managing your sprint backlog in software is a lazy and bad practice. This lecture shows you what can happen and what you can do to make it better.

Although you can freely chose the structure for your Daily Scrum, the "three questions" are a proven and very common structure. Skipping any of the questions means you're depriving the Daily Scrum of one of its core purposes.

If your Daily Scrum is not at the same time and same place every single day, you will run into problems. Learn why this fixed time and place are important and how you can reap the benefits.

Are your Dailies starting on time? Most Daily Scrums out there don't – and that is a problem! This lectures shows you what you can do about it.

Do you know this: "Leave the team alone and they don't follow the process anymore" – well, that's not how it should be in an agile team. Learn that cultivating flat hierarchies and responsibility to make a team more productive.

Talking about problems takes courage. It is important that your team has that courage, talks about problems and does something to solve them!

Some teams try to substitute a weekly meeting for a Daily Scrum. Learn why this is a bad idea.

The Daily Scrum is a "standup meeting" for a reason! This lecture explains why standing is good and what you can do to encourage your team to follow this good practice.

Slipping into discussions can quickly derail any meeting – especially such a short meeting as the Daily Scrum. Learn how to detect and solve this problem in this lecture.

Not every Daily Scrum has heaps of new progress or plans. Learn to be fine with that.

There are many myths and jokes about the Product Owner and the Daily Scrum. This lecture busts some of these myths and gives you tools to negotiate between the interests of the Product Owner and the team.

Another sign, that your team isn't really self-organizing and agile is, if they wait for the Scrum Master to start the Daily Scrum! This lecture gives you a few tricks to educate your team towards more agility.

The Daily Scrum is a meeting for the team to communicate. If the team doesn't communicate in the Daily Scrum, something is wrong. Learn to detect this problem and get tips how to cope with it.

Silent and shy people are often those with the most valuable ideas and insights! Get them to talk to maximize your team's productivity.

Sprint goals and keeping them in focus is a very effective tool to stop being busy and start making progress towards your project goal!

Often a Scrum Master closes the Daily Scrum meeting by thanking the team. Learn why this is actually bad and what you should do instead.

Download the cheat sheet, print it and have it handy at your next Daily Scrum!