Raven S. Cashaw is an Agile coach and Scrum Master working for RAVVE Technology. She previously worked in the same capacity for BMO Harris Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank. The nature of Raven S. Cashaw’s expertise involves her in daily Scrum events.
The daily Scrum event is a 15-minute meeting for software developers. Specifically, for software developers who are part of teams practicing Agile software development. The daily Scrum is focused on inspecting the progress of a sprint. A sprint is a short-term goal that is part of a software development project. A sprint can last from one to four weeks. There are several guidelines that help ensure that the daily Scrum event is fast, focused, and effective.
All communications during daily scrums must be limited to only two things: the current sprint and preparations for the next sprint. Within this limit participants in the sprint should communicate accomplishments from the day before and current deliverable targets. The focus must be on accomplishments or deliverables and not tasks. As an example, researching how to implement a software feature is a task, whereas successfully building a feature such as a search facility is an accomplishment.
Even though Scrum participants are strictly advised to talk only about the current and future sprints, there has to be a way for them to communicate that they have been engaged in work unrelated to the sprint goals. For this purpose, the term “other stuff” can be used. For the Scrum Master, hearing that team members have been doing “other stuff” constantly should be regarded as a red flag that the development team might be too distracted to effectively focus on the sprint goals. In this case, appropriate measures should be taken by managers to remove these distractions.
