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Too many daily standup meetings?

Last post 03:47 pm October 30, 2019 by Aditya Vaze
7 replies
02:42 pm October 25, 2019

I'm a Project Leader with a new software company and I'm facilitating all of the daily scrum meetings. We currently have 3 separate sprint teams with 3 separate daily standups. We used to have one daily standup when I got here, but I'm splitting them up so they'll be more useful. The problem is that now we have 3 back-to-back 10-minutes meetings every morning where I'm in all 3, the Tech Writer is in all 3, the Tech Lead is in all 3, and the Lead QA is in all 3. I'm getting complaints because there used to be 1 standup to attend and now there are 3. I'm not sure how to make the situation better though. The teams need to be split up. Any suggestions?


04:40 pm October 25, 2019

Are the complaints coming from the 3 individuals who are now spread across all three teams and their respective Scrum Events? 

It sounds like the challenge lies with the context switching of the leads more so than having 3 Daily Scrums. 


08:31 pm October 25, 2019

What are " 3 separate sprint teams "

And given some people in the team are cross-team, how are the teams formed? Can you write out for all the people in the teams, maybe it is helpful?

Also, why did you go for 3 daily scrums?


08:45 pm October 25, 2019

I would ask the teams to discuss this and find what works best rather than cater to 3 individuals who happen to have a special circumstance by being shared across 3 teams. Besides, if you have them back to back; it's really just a half hour meeting to them with different content every 10 minutes....


08:50 pm October 25, 2019

now we have 3 back-to-back 10-minutes meetings every morning where I'm in all 3, the Tech Writer is in all 3, the Tech Lead is in all 3, and the Lead QA is in all 3.

Your issue is a result of spreading individuals (SM, Dev Team members) across multiple Scrum Teams, and not a result of Scrum.   It is both an unwise strategy and a difficult constraint to manage when single-threading individuals across multiple teams.

But the Daily Scrum should be the least of your Scrum Event concerns.   How will such individuals (you included) fel about having to attend three separate Sprint Reviews?   Three separate Sprint Planning sessions?   Three separate Sprint Retrospectives?

Ask yourself what is the goal for the Daily Scrum (hint: it is in the Scrum Guide)?   Then ask yourself if such a goal can be achieved through a different practice that is equally effective and informative for each team.   The beauty of the Daily Scrum is in its simplicity in achieving a key inspect/adapt point every day for the team.



Keep in mind that if Dev Team members are having difficulty setting aside a few minutes of each day to align themselves with their fellow teammates and come up with a game plan for the day, you likely have other significant issues to address.

 


06:22 am October 26, 2019

I'm a Project Leader with a new software company and I'm facilitating all of the daily scrum meetings. We currently have 3 separate sprint teams with 3 separate daily standups. We used to have one daily standup when I got here, but I'm splitting them up so they'll be more useful.

Is it really your job, as “Project Leader”, to make these decisions on behalf of others?

More broadly, why is the organization adopting and then changing various parts of Scrum, and what do people hope to gain by doing so?


10:39 pm October 28, 2019

Scrum often doesn't solve your problems. It merely makes them (painfully) visible.

Are you aware that listed several roles that are not described by Scrum?

Could it be that having a Project Leader, Tech Lead, Tech Writer and Lead QA who are in all the teams is an impediment to having three separate self-organizing teams?

Could the role of you and these other individuals change so that you all find a position in just one of the teams, or such that you take on different responsibilities, such as servant leadership or coaching?


03:47 pm October 30, 2019

I Completely agree with all the other contributors above, especially Timothy's advice that the daily scrum events should be least of your concerns.

We currently have 3 separate sprint teams with 3 separate daily standups.

Do you mean to say that you have 3 separate  SCRUM teams? I am reading it right, this is the beginning of the complication. If these are 3 separate Scrum Teams working with a single Product Backlog, you have some hope of quick recovery.

However, I understand that there was single team that was split into 3 teams. Was that split agreed by the development team? I am assuming (from the information provided), and correct me if I am wrong, that the teams were not split keeping the goal that the dependencies are removed or minimized. They appear to have been split to increase the perceived utility.  The current structure has become so complex that, now there is a consistent addition of new dependency (viz. unavailability of Project Leader, Tech Lead, Tech Writer and Lead QA for their Scrum events). 

In my opinion, even though the team is split into three teams, the baggage is hard to lose any time soon, unless there is a self-reorganization effort by the teams collectively.  


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