How to Conduct Daily Scrum Meeting

Daily stand-up meeting is one of the most critical meetings in agile methodology of software development. It is a quick review of each team member's last days work, planning for the next day's work and impediments the member is facing. ScrumMaster looks into the impediment and can resolve it upfront or in a sidebar meeting.

Stand-up meetings have certain rituals to be followed:

1. Strictly stand-up: For the brevity of the meeting everybody should stand-up till the meeting is finished. Standing-up also raises your concentration level and enables you to listen to other members carefully.

2. Short, 15 minutes meeting: These meetings are conducted to keep the entire team in synchronization and also to keep everyone aware about the impediments faced by the other team members. If any discussion on the impediments takes longer, the discussion should be handled in a follow-up meeting with only those who are affected and those who can resolve the issue.

3. Everybody should be present: 100% presence is necessary to keep the entire team in synch. If you feel you can't participate because of overwork or leave, make one of your team members aware about your part of discussion.

4. Concentrate on every member's discussion: The Scrum teams are self-organizing and there is no strict delegation of work. So if there is any impediment faced by one of the team members, feel free to pitch-in and resolve the issue. For this you need to listen to others very carefully.

5. Everybody has to speak in no strict order: Yes, this is the ground rule of the daily Scrum meeting that everybody has to speak in a desired manner: accomplishment since last meeting, plans till next meting and impediments faced (if any).

6. No detailed technical discussion: Since the time is limited for the Scrum meeting, any lengthy discussion between two members on any issue can lead to wastage of entire team's time. If any such discussion is required, do it in the sidebar meeting.

It doesn't matter at what time during the day you conduct the meeting, it should be followed religiously. Ideally, conduct the meeting in the morning before you start your day's tasks so that you get maximum bandwidth of the support functions and team to get all the roadblocks resolved.