Daily meeting: 3 questions only… really?

As we know, the Scrum Guide suggests that the development team should have a daily meeting to inspect progress towards the sprint goal. This meeting increases the dev team chances of reaching that goal. The basic suggested questions are:

• What did I do yesterday that helped meet the sprint goal?

• What am I going to do today to help meet the goal?

• Are there any obstacles that prevent me or my team from meeting the sprint goal?

Obviously, these are valid and important questions for the progress of the sprint, but to what extent are they really useful for the development of that iteration and, consequently, of the project?

In an empirical analysis, I realize that many teams use the three questions in an orthodox and inexorable way. But many times, the same teams end up transforming a meeting that was designed to have 15m in a daily meeting with no end of complaints and notes. They strictly follow the axiom of the three questions, but in a bureaucratic, boring way, generating little or almost no value for the process. I have been preaching that if the daily meeting is used in this way, it ends up being the antithesis of what it should be, since it generates more waste than benefit.

There are several techniques for conducting a daily meeting. Sometimes you have to think of out of the box and look for questions that can be asked within a short time box, but that actually add knowledge and provide an action plan to the team in relation to the sprint goal.

For example, would it not be worthwhile to bring up the vision of the sprint backlog and the difficulties with the chosen prioritization? Or even discuss the stories that are being made and the difficulties that team is having in their development? How about an item by item discussion of the sprint backlog? Is the number of selected stories compatible with the team’s speed? What is missing in the sprint backlog? What could be completed today?

I agree that some of these questions are technical, involve estimates and are outside the usual scope of the daily meeting. On the other hand, in practice, depending on the maturity of the team, the repetition of the three standard questions in every daily meeting tends to generate some relaxation and accommodation.

We have to keep in mind the fundamental reason why we are having a ceremony. The question here is how to make the daily worthwhile, even if subverting some of its key questions. In my experience, many times, being stuck with the three standard questions can demonstrate adherence to the framework and transparency regarding the work, however, it tends to be less useful in terms of adaptation, collaboration and value generation, which are equally important agile values. Whether you are a scrum master or a member of a dev team, think about it on your next daily meeting.