If you’re a Scrum Master or a member of a Scrum team, I’m sure there were times when you wondered if the Daily Scrum is really necessary or felt that it has lost its purpose or it just became boring. I can understand that. Since it’s a daily event and you’ve been through some sprints, the Daily Scrum surely seems it has lost its magic.
But not all is lost. You can recover that excitement you had when Scrum first started and you had the firsts Daily Scrum. In this article we’re going to remind you why the Daily Scrum is important, how to make the most out of it and even some tips and tricks to keep it alive.  

First things first. Why hold a daily event where team members answer the same questions every day? Perhaps no significant progress it’s made from one day to another, so what’s the point? From these questions we can easily understand that the person asking them (it might be even you) no longer sees the value in this event. So allow me to remind you. 
The scope of Daily Scrum it’s to sync-up the team, to openly express any concerns team members might have and identify the blockers. Yes, the team members already talk to each other on a daily basis, but at the Daily Scrum they have the chance to speak together. The knowledge one team member has can be shared with all the team. Alternative, more optimal solutions can come up collectively as the team discusses its progress. As a team they can see how far or close they are to the Sprint Goal. This particular event contains all three Scrum empiricism pillars – Transparency as every team member knows the team’s progress, Sprint goal, Inspection as the Development Team inspects how the Sprint Goal is impacted and Adaptation, as based on the progress towards the Sprint Goal the team plans for the next 24h.

To make the most out of it, the Scrum Master or facilitator if there is one on your team, should guide the team to ensure that the discussion is meaningful. This means that if the discussion strays away, he or she should bring the discussion back on track with the adequate questions. When issues are identified, the team should not try to solve them during the Daily Scrum. It will surely make the event longer than 15 minutes. There are solid reasons for which the 15 minute time-box is strictly applied for the Daily Scrum. If it takes longer than this it becomes tiresome, the scope is somewhere lost, team members stop paying attention and it’s genuinely just wasted time. If it takes less than 15 minutes that’s just fine as long as the team is synchronized, there is transparency regarding each member’s work and mistakes or impediments are identified. 

To make it less boring, you could try different techniques for conducting the Daily Scrum. For example you could toss a stress ball at the team and whoever catches it starts first. And then throw the ball at a random member to continue, not necessarily the one beside him/her. You could also use the technique “Walk the board” where team members talk according to each story. Start the day with a joke or a story to start the Daily Scrum in a more entertaining manner. Start a parking lot for issues that are not discussed. What you need to do is to have a whiteboard or just a simple board where they list down the issues which are to be dealt with later. After the meeting gets over, schedule another meeting with only those members who are directly related with that particular issue and solve them.

Hope you enjoyed this article and that it will help you on your future Daily Scrum meetings. Feel free to comment and contact us and share your ideas on how to improve the Daily Scrum!