Stand-ups : The heartbeat of Scrum

Historical Challenges

We experienced fundamental challenges in traditional project management regarding innovation and collaboration. The somewhat rigid process of having a gantt chart with clinically defined tasks from a detailed specification (as detailed as we could dream up in our pre-project design meeting) seemed to trap the development team in a rut of lifeless reporting. The development process simply consisted of grabbing the next task and completing it as fast as possible.

How scrum saved us

The beauty of Scrum is the value of conversation. Performance is not measured by the amount of tasks a single developer can grab and how fast he can deliver the ‘clinical’ value associated with the task. The team can journey together through a set of stories that becomes a ‘book’ which we call a deliverable increment.

Scrum helps us to facilitate healthy conversations. The reporting mindset is a killer in any teams. The stand-up should never become a meeting where the development team reports to the PO, Scrum master or anyone else. This meeting is the developers’ place of safety. A 15 minute time-capped meeting where the team can sync and where collaboration and innovation can be fostered. As a Scrum master, my dream is to help coach the team to reach a level of maturity where the three questions are answered implicitly.

The focus of the Stand-Ups

The focus of the stand-up is improvement. How do we as a team can optimally address the sprint backlog in such a way as to optimise velocity. This is where self-organisation is actively developed in an organic way. The approach towards facilitating healthy conversations was quite challenging. The reason for this is simple. Indoctrination.

In most formal education processes, the focus is alway on individual performance. The goal is to become the hero. To effectively implement Scrum, we had to completely break down this mindset. Waterfall is embedded in the mindset of the world as well as in the minds of people. In the words of Jeff Sutherland: ” The Way the World Works Is Broken”. The time arrived for us to break the mould and renew the minds.

We approached it as follows:

1. Eliminate the pressure of authority in the room.
2. Use the three questions to facilitate the conversation until questions are answered inherently.
3. Let the story tell the story. The focus is not ME but the STORY.
4. Are we still in line with the goal?

This is still a constant work in process. In my experience, this is the most challenging mindset to break.

No authority

To eliminate the habit of reporting a few mindsets had to be renewed:

1. No more roles.
   • Each team member needs to realise that he no longer has a title.
2. The scrum master is not a project manager
3. The focus is a conversation to improve communication to reach optimal velocity.

The questions

• What did I accomplish yesterday?
•  What will I do today?
• What obstacles are impeding my progress?

These three questions became the guideline for the conversation. All team members need to get involved and get a change to participate. Although these questions may lead to the reporting pitfall, it is a step in the right direction.

Let the story tell the story

This approach was a major step towards breaking the reporting mindset. The story is personified in order to become the focus. An example would be as follows:

The story personified:

As story 1, I need to perform the following actions in order to be able to satisfy the following criteria.
As story 1, I need the involvement of developer n in order to be able to complete the following task.

Initially, this was a bit confusing. The developers became quite creative in the personification of the stories which made the stand-ups more fun.

Are we still in line with the goal

The goal is alway visible on our sprint backlog and it is considered every morning. If re-alignment is needed, we re-align.