How Daily Standups Should Work

By its nature, Scrum tries to be as flexible as possible so it doesn’t dictate how any particular team conducts their daily standups. The point of the daily standup is to give everyone on the team the opportunity to share information with the rest of the team in order to do their work that day in order to accomplish the sprint goal. The daily standup should not be a kind of status report for individuals or stakeholders outside the team.

To keep your daily standups focused and effective, there’s a set of common practices that have become standard. It’s up to the Scrum Master to make sure that all of these practices are followed properly, and that everybody on the team gets the respect and attention they deserve while they are speaking.

Best practices should include:

• Time-boxed to 15 minutes
• Everyone stands
• Anyone can attend
• Only team members speak
• Everyone answers three basic questions: What did I do yesterday? What am I doing today? Is anything blocking me from finishing my work?
• Discussions are deferred or set to a parking lot

Parking Lot

One of the easiest rules to break is the 15-minute time-box. Some developers may find themselves tempted to discuss solutions to problems others raise during the standup. This can easily lead to a back-and-forth discussion that raises other issues and extends the time. The standup may also become an opportunity for managers or stakeholders to make broader organizational announcements beyond what is relevant for the current sprint and may require further discussion.

While it’s fair and there are no set rules against raising issues that may relate to the daily work at the standup, the 15-minute time limit is intentional. One practice used is to ask everyone to agree to parking lot a topic to extend the meeting when everyone has given their update. Parking lot a topic can be useful as you can let everyone else who won’t be impacted by the topic to get back to their day.

Regardless of the approach, finding the proper balance for your daily standups is always a matter of trying new things, paying attention to the results, and adjust whenever necessary.