Being ScrumMaster (Daily Scrum)

This week I was ScrumMaster, so that makes an interesting topic for me to talk about, one of the ScrumMaster's main job is to facilitate the daily scrum meeting, don’t forget ScrumMaster is also a member of the scrum team.

As a ScrumMaster make sure that the venue where Scrum meeting are held is consistent, changing venue can cause unnecessary delay, also do not change the time of daily Scrum, no matter what happens around in the company, daily scrum should happen at the same place, same time (it is ScrumMaster's job to ensure that everyone attends the daily scrum).

Ensure each scrum member answers the following questions in the daily scrum

• What did they work on since last scrum meeting?
• What are they planning to work until next scrum meeting?
• Are there any issues they would like to highlight?

Try to have daily scrum next to a while board, record what team members are working on today and not what they did yesterday, ask them status about tasks they were working on since last scrum meeting. Make sure that the burn down graph of the sprint is updated, if there are any other status (e.g. Build Status, Regression Test or Bugs reported) update them on the white board for everyone to see.

To be a successful ScrumMaster please ensure the following

• Resolve conflict between team members as soon as possible.
• Ensure everyone is heard and has opportunity to respond.
• Ensure people do not get too much in to the details.
• Daily scrum is to report progress and raise problem (not to solve them in the meeting).
• If the sponsor is attending the meeting they are only listening (they are not allowed to talk).
• The only people allowed to talk are the one who are working in the sprint.
• Normal meeting etiquette is observed.

The most important thing for the ScrumMaster in the daily scrum is to keep track of time, there is no rule (at least that I am aware of) as to how long the daily scrum should last, at our place we have about 12-15 team member and the scrum lasts about 15 minutes, so I would recommend about 1.5-2 minute per person.

Some of things you should watch out and address during daily scrum

• Team member are providing status to the ScrumMaster rather than team.
• Team member don’t look motivated.

Team will not feel passionate to attend the meeting if they feel that ScrumMaster is not interested to listen to them, with that thought I will take your leave until next time... bye for now.