Scrum Daily meeting: Punctuality over Full team presence?

Question

My understanding is that a Daily Scrum meeting should be very quick, hosted in a friendly way and that it requires all the team members present. Because it is objective is to have everyone up to date with what everybody else is doing.

I like Scrum Daily Meetings that are held like that.

In my latest project our Daily Scrums are more like a Status Update meeting. Although the position is that we are holding Scrums and practicing proper Agile.

We are a distributed team, in 2 different countries, and the people that is in the same Country are not in the same office. As consequence we have virtual Scrums.

The problem is that our meetings always start on time, many people calls before the actual start time, so they actually start at the very first second of the meeting. Without any tolerance for small delays.

For example the last time we were on the phone and the person coordinating the meeting checked if everyone was on, and we said one of our team members was not on yet but he was calling. And I was told to start sharing without waiting for my team member.

Also everyone has a lot of meetings, and sometimes they are back to back with the Scrum meeting, so it is understandable if they arrive during the first or second minute of the meeting.

Is that the normal for teams practicing Daily Scrums? It is the first time that happens to me.

I can not find any bibliography directly about it. Although the presence of all team members is stressed, it is stressed also that the meetings should always start at the same time. But I imagine there can be a small delay tolerance.

I even read on a blog someone suggesting that the Scrum Master can place penalties if someone arrives "5 seconds" late. I thought the Scrums were supposed to be friendly, and having a penalty like that seems counter productive.

What is the recommended approach in a situation like this?

Answer 1

Like with any agile practice, scrum teams can decide this for themselves. If it bothers you, you should bring it up in your retrospective and try to come to a solution that everyone is happy with. Perhaps other team members feel the same way, but think that's "just how scrum is done."

That being said, in my scrum meetings I start on the second unless three or more people are missing. For a meeting that everyone is required to attend every day, I feel it is disrespectful of everyone's time to do otherwise. When I'm the one that shows up late, my team starts without me. If we have time at the end, we go back to the tasks of people who came late.

I have been less strict about punctuality in the past, and what happened is people who showed up on time got tired of their time being wasted, so they started trying to guess when the meeting would actually start, and show up then instead, which had a snowball effect.

For a daily meeting, it's not the end of the world if someone occasionally misses part of it. Hopefully it isn't the only communication you're doing throughout the day.

Answer 2

If you wait for people, it teaches them it's OK to be late. If you start on the minute, people will be taught they need to be there on time if they want to participate. Programming is a professional activity that requires at least a modicum of discipline.

That being said, the point of the daily standup is to discuss what the team did yesterday, what they are doing today, and to make everyone aware of roadblocks. The scheduled time should be "first thing in the morning when everyone is available", not necessarily a specific time on the clock. The end goal is to work together as a team, not follow strict rules. If your team is very new to agile, sticking to the clock is good way to build your team skills. If you're a mature team, do what works for your team.

Answer 3

People over process. That's one of the core tenants of Agile, if a process isn't working for your team, scrap it or modify it. Let the team modify it to fit their needs.

Answer 4

Is this how Scrum works?

I would suggest to you that daily meetings are too often for any business activity, unless your team is especially productive (meaning they can produce large swaths of functionality in very short time periods).

If you do decide to have daily tag-ups, they should last no longer than 15 to 20 minutes, and yes, everyone needs to be on time or they don't participate. Tag ups are for the benefit of the team members, not the scrum master; penalties for missing daily meetings should be handled in the same fashion as any other tardiness would.

In short, I don't see anything special here. I do think that daily meetings of any kind border on micro-management, but if you do decide to do them, you need to do them properly.

Answer 5

Think of it like this, what is the point of the daily stand up?

It is your opportunity to raise impediments with the rest of the team, to flag up that you may need assistance, and to highlight changes that will affect others. It is important that you as a developer are there.

With a team of 4 -8 developers, they need to be quick and snappy - 30 seconds each most of the time. If was performing the role of scrum master, I would be concerned about late starting of the meetings as it would increase the meeting cost. Likewise, variable meeting times create a distraction for everyone - are we about to... I would also be very aware of balancing this with the needs to ensure the team is able to support each other, so may delay the meeting if needed because someone who was likely to be impeded was on the telephone / toilet.

Where teams are distributed geographically like you are describing, I would be flagging this up as a team impediment at EVERY retrospective. It is blatantly an impediment to the scrums performance and communication that they are not all sat together and able to communicate freely and easily.

I would be arguing that this should be organised as two separate scrum teams, and work organised so that scrum of scrums should handle the international communication.