A line manager has started attending the Daily Scrum and asks each Developer in turn what they did yesterday, taking notes for a weekly status report. The event now runs twenty-five minutes and the Developers have stopped mentioning problems. What should the Scrum Master do?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 1. Understanding and applying the Scrum framework medium
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The options
Correct Coach the manager and the team back to the event's purpose — fifteen minutes, for the Developers, to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog
Correct. The event has been repurposed into a report, which is why the Developers stopped raising problems: nobody surfaces an impediment in a meeting whose output is a performance record.
Not correct Ask the Developers to answer the three questions more briefly so that it fits in fifteen minutes
Wrong twice. The three questions are one optional technique rather than a requirement, and making a status meeting faster leaves a status meeting.
Not correct Ban all non-Developers from the room, since the Daily Scrum is a closed event
Wrong in its reasoning. It is an event for the Developers, but Scrum does not define a guest list to enforce. The problem is that the event now serves a manager's report, not that a manager is standing there.
Not correct Move the Daily Scrum to a written channel so that it cannot overrun
Wrong. The timebox is a symptom, not the disease, and replacing the conversation removes the quick decision-making and impediment-spotting the event exists to produce.
Why
The Daily Scrum is a fifteen-minute event for the Developers, held at the same time and place every working day to reduce complexity, and a Product Owner or Scrum Master who is actively working on Sprint Backlog items takes part as a Developer. The test to remember is not who is in the room but who the event is for: if the Developers leave with an actionable plan for the next day of work, it worked.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Daily Scrum
- What it says
- The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 1 and space the ones you get wrong.
Practise Professional Scrum Master I
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