Conducting The Daily Scrum Meeting Or The “Daily Stand Up”

The daily scrum or standup meeting

One of the primary responsibilities of the scrum master is to hold the daily scrum meeting, or the “daily stand up”, as it is commonly referred to by scrum professionals. The person is required to get the product owner and the team members together for the meeting. The objective is to avail information pertaining to three important aspects of the daily scrum ^Figure 

1.     Which tasks have been completed in the sprint carried out the day before, or yesterday?

2.     What tasks are to be taken up for development for the particular day, or today?

3.     Did any team member face any hurdles or impediments during the sprint? If so, what were they?

Duration of the daily standup

The daily scrum meeting is time boxed to last for a maximum of 15 minutes, and should not extend this period.

Purpose of the daily scrum

The main purpose of the standup is not to resolve issues or provide solutions to problems. The aim is to apprise the team members regarding the current status of the project, and ensure they collaborate and contribute jointly as a team during the development activity ^{Figure 2}. If any team member faces a problem, and it is mentioned during the daily standup, it is the scrum master’s responsibility to ensure that the issue is resolved at the earliest. The solutions to such problems are provided by the scrum master and the product owner.

Holding stand-ups for non-collocated or distributed teams

One of the major concerns, and also a probable problem at times, for the scrum master is to hold the daily standup when teams are not located in the same office or geographical area. Many companies now use and implement scrum methodology, and in certain cases, the entire development team may not be located in the same place. With off-shoring activities becoming popular by the day, soon it would be common scenario to hold meetings with team members residing in different states and even different countries. Scrum advocates that the daily scrum should include all the team members. In fact, the term “scrum” is akin to the scrum huddle often practiced in rugby, or “rugger”. With large distances separating the team members, it may not be possible to hold a daily scrum in which all team members can be physically present.

A possible way out is to use electronic media and facilities to decrease the geographical distances.Team members can use Skype and videoconferencing tools to participate online in the meeting. The scrum master has to instruct every remotely located team member to log on at a particular time when the daily scrum is to be held, and explain that the members should make sure the hardware and software tools are properly functional at the time of the meeting. 

                          "Please visit http://www.quickscrum.com to download the Quickscrum tool" 

Source:- http://mrugeshpanchal.hubpages.com/hub/Conducting-The-Daily-Scrum-Meeting-Or-The-Daily-Stand-Up