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During a Sprint, the Scrum Team meets daily at a Scrum Meeting to provide status on progress.

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Quick reference

Scrum Meetings

During a Sprint, the Scrum Team meets daily at a Scrum Meeting to provide status on progress.

When to Use Scrum Meetings

Scrum Meetings need to be daily activities (or sometimes even twice a day) during the Sprint. What time during the day is a decision that the Scrum Team can make.

Instructions

The purpose of the Scrum Meeting is to provide status and to integrate the activities of the Scrum Team members.

  • Meeting is held daily, at the same time and at the same place.
    • Occasionally I have seen Scrum Teams that wanted to meet twice a day due to the speed at which work was progressing.
  • Everyone on the team must attend.
    • Product Owner normally attends to answer questions, not to report on status.
  • The meeting is chaired and facilitated by the Scrum Master.
  • The meeting is normally held near the Scrum Board, if the Scrum Board is maintained virtually, it is projected on a screen or monitor.
  • Story Cards are moved to appropriate columns.
    • Each Scrum Team member provides status on the Stories and tasks they are working on – every team member reports.
    • Those that have met the “Demo Criteria” are moved to Done.
    • Those that are started and in work are moved to WIP.
    • My practice is that a Scrum Team member can only have 2 cards in the WIP column.  They must complete the work of one of those cards before they start anything else.
  • New Roadblocks are added.
    • Roadblocks are external barriers that are impacting the work, not just that something is hard to do.
  • Scrum Master provides the status of existing Roadblocks and removes those that are resolved.
  • The meeting result should be an updated Scrum Board once all Scrum Team members and the Scrum Master have reported.
  • Scrum Team members provide an estimate of how much work they have left to do on their cards that are in the WIP column.
    • No debate, just provide the number.
    • Number can be greater than the original value if a Scrum Team member has encountered a problem.
  • Scrum Master adds up the remaining effort in the “Sprint Backlog” column and “WIP” column to determine the current value for the Burn-down Chart and plots it.
  • A well-run Scrum Meeting takes about 10 to 15 minutes depending upon the size of the Scrum Team.

Hints and Tips

  • These meetings can become long and boring if you allow the Scrum Team members to talk about “how” or “what” they did. You just want status. Did it start?  Did it finish? Are there Roadblocks?
  • A technique that I like to use to keep people focused on the cards is to have the Scrum Master go to each card in the WIP list and ask the Scrum Team member, “Did you finish yet?” and if it is still in the WIP column, “Are there any Roadblocks?” That way the Scrum Master does not give up control of the meeting. If Scrum Team members want to talk about how a particular Story or task was done, cover that at the end of the meeting.
  • Once going down the WIP list, the Scrum Master should then ask each person which Stories or tasks they are working on, and if necessary move the card to the WIP column. Again, this keeps the Scrum Master in control and leads to a crisp focused meeting.
  • The Scrum Master goes down the list of Roadblocks. If the resolution of a Roadblock is a long discussion, the Scrum Master should do that outside the meeting with the appropriate Scrum Team member.
  • Don’t let a Product Owner turn the meeting into an impromptu Sprint Demo by asking about the result of each Story. The Product Owner should go to the Scrum Team member after the meeting if they have questions.
  • If a person is on the same Story or task for 2 days in a row, or the estimated effort is burning upwards instead of downwards, the Scrum Master should probe for any roadblocks and the rest of the team should provide assistance to help the individual having problems with their Story – especially if it is now the highest priority item.
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  • 00:04 Hi, this is Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 Let's talk about a special case of the project pulsing meeting, and
  • 00:09 that's the scrum team meeting.
  • 00:11 This meeting is critical in the scrum process.
  • 00:13 So let's see exactly how it happens.
  • 00:16 Well, it starts with the fact that this is a daily pulse meeting,
  • 00:19 similar to what some organizations do with daily stand up meetings.
  • 00:23 In fact, in really fast moving agile scrum projects, you may even meet twice daily.
  • 00:30 The best practice is to held this meeting every day at the same place at
  • 00:34 the same time.
  • 00:35 Establish this as a pattern.
  • 00:37 It could be a virtual or a face to face meeting.
  • 00:40 Start on time, end on time, and hold the meeting to just 15 minutes.
  • 00:44 Establish that as a discipline.
  • 00:47 These are focused status meetings.
  • 00:49 It's not time for long winded discussions and explanations.
  • 00:52 In the meeting, go around the scrum team and
  • 00:55 focus on the WIP column of the scrum board.
  • 00:58 What have you finished and can be moved to the done column?
  • 01:01 What have you started and should now be moved to the WIP column?
  • 01:05 Are there any roadblocks?
  • 01:07 Finally, an update on the estimates of the remaining work of those tasks that
  • 01:12 are in the WIP column, that will clarify the current status of the project.
  • 01:17 You can move the cards on the scrum board during the meeting,
  • 01:20 that's my preferred approach, or the scrum master can update it after the meeting.
  • 01:25 In addition, the scrum master will take the revised estimates for the WIP work and
  • 01:29 add the estimates for the stories and
  • 01:32 tasks that are still in the sprint backlog column.
  • 01:34 When added up,
  • 01:35 they are estimating the amount of time required to complete the sprint.
  • 01:39 The scrum master then plots these on the burn down chart.
  • 01:42 Let's take a look at the scrum board which is maintained during the scrum meetings.
  • 01:46 The scrum board is the project schedule status.
  • 01:49 We know the status of every story based upon its column.
  • 01:53 When it started, it moves to the WIP column.
  • 01:55 When it's finished meets the demo criteria, it moves to the done column.
  • 02:00 The scrum team member working on a story or a task is responsible for
  • 02:04 determining the best way to do the work and to complete it quickly and completely.
  • 02:09 One of the ways the agile scrum is different from traditional projects is
  • 02:14 that a scrum team member is normally limited on how
  • 02:17 many stories they can be working on at one time.
  • 02:20 Instead of multitasking to the point where everything is started and
  • 02:24 nothing is finished,
  • 02:25 we typically constrain the number of active stories to get focused activity.
  • 02:29 Some people use the constraint of a scrum team member can only have one story in
  • 02:34 the WIP column.
  • 02:35 I personally allowed to, but no more.
  • 02:38 In my experience, there's often a reason to put a task on hold for an hour or two,
  • 02:42 waiting for a phone call or something of that nature.
  • 02:45 So it's good to have another one to work on.
  • 02:48 There is no requirement for two stories and
  • 02:51 focusing on them one at a time is still the best practice.
  • 02:54 One of the benefits of this is that if the story remains in the WIP column for
  • 02:59 multiple days, that is a strong indication that there's an issue with that story.
  • 03:04 Let me talk about roadblocks again.
  • 03:06 During this meeting the scrum team members should be identifying any roadblocks.
  • 03:10 Now roadblocks are issues outside the control of the scrum team member that
  • 03:15 are preventing the scrum team member from completing a story or task.
  • 03:19 Roadblocks are not something that's just hard and
  • 03:22 slowing someone down, that's normal project work.
  • 03:25 The roadblock is an organizational or operational barrier preventing
  • 03:30 the team member from doing the work efficiently and effectively.
  • 03:35 Sometimes, scrum team members run into a problem and they don't want to admit it.
  • 03:40 If a story stays in the WIP column for more than two days,
  • 03:42 you need to dig into it with that scrum team member to find out what is wrong.
  • 03:46 You probably don't have time in the scrum meeting to do that, but
  • 03:50 set a time after the meeting when the team members, scrum master, and possibly one or
  • 03:54 two other team members can sit down and look at what the problem is on that story.
  • 03:59 Don't let stories or tasks linger, get them done and
  • 04:02 move them to the next column.
  • 04:04 Let's talk about the burndown chart.
  • 04:06 This chart is different from what most project management charts look like, and
  • 04:10 I find that there is some confusion with it.
  • 04:12 The burndown chart graphically shows an estimate of the amount of
  • 04:16 work still needed to be done to complete the items in the sprint backlog.
  • 04:20 You may recall that the chart was initially baseline with the total
  • 04:23 estimated amount of work to do the sprint backlog on day one of the sprint,
  • 04:28 that was the point on the left side of the chart.
  • 04:30 And there is an estimate of zero work to be done on the last day of the sprint,
  • 04:34 that's the point on the right side of the chart.
  • 04:37 If the estimates were exactly correct, the amount of remaining work would follow that
  • 04:42 straight line down that connects these two points.
  • 04:44 But we all know that estimates will be off at least a little bit.
  • 04:48 So as team members start to work on a task or story,
  • 04:51 they will find that they need more or less time than originally estimated.
  • 04:56 The key to this change is that the scrum team member does not tell the scrum
  • 05:00 master how much work they have spent,
  • 05:03 rather they estimate how much time is needed to complete that story.
  • 05:07 The scrum master will take all of those estimates for
  • 05:10 those tasks in the working process column, plus the estimates for
  • 05:14 the work that is still in the sprint backlog column and
  • 05:17 has not started yet to determine the total estimate for the remaining work.
  • 05:21 That is the value that is plotted at each scrum meeting.
  • 05:24 The scrum team members provide their estimate to the scrum master.
  • 05:28 Notice the scrum master doesn't need to know how much effort was spent on
  • 05:33 the completed tasks, those tasks are done.
  • 05:36 So the amount of work needed to complete them is zero, no more work to do.
  • 05:41 The burndown chart can provide a good indication of the progress being made.
  • 05:45 The scrum board can be a little misleading because the amount of work in each story
  • 05:50 and task is different.
  • 05:52 The burndown chart is just adding up the totals from all of those, usually in
  • 05:57 hours and doesn't care about how much effort is spent on a particular task.
  • 06:02 So if the burndown line is above the baseline, the project will
  • 06:05 likely need more effort than originally planned for this point in the sprint.
  • 06:09 When this is the case, it's likely that some of the stories in the sprint backlog
  • 06:14 won't get finished, and the values are below the baseline
  • 06:17 the project is running ahead of effort and the sprint backlog should be finished.
  • 06:22 In fact, the team may be able to do a couple of items in the not selected list.
  • 06:27 An interesting phenomena is that the chart can actually burn up.
  • 06:32 This would happen if the estimate to complete several tasks are raised
  • 06:36 significantly once the activity actually starts.
  • 06:40 If the task was first estimated to take four hours, and now that it started,
  • 06:44 the estimate goes up to take 40 hours, the total of the remaining work
  • 06:48 may actually be higher than the previous day's estimated value.
  • 06:52 Doesn't happen often, and there's frequently a roadblock or
  • 06:56 two associated with that activity.
  • 06:59 The scrum meeting is where the scrum master and
  • 07:01 scrum team are able to keep their fingers on the pulse of the project.
  • 07:05 These are crisp focused meetings and they allow the scrum master to then
  • 07:10 update the scrum board and the burn down chart with accurate information.

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