What is a deily meeting?
Daily is a meeting is a one of a scrum events and the main idea is to organise in every working days short meeting (<= 15 min) to shortly present ours plans for a next 24h, what we made from the last daily and what problems we meet. This is the typical definition whitch is presented in every scrum teams. And if we are using scrum than this is clearly fine but what if we have a problem with scrum (we cannot use scrum because for exxample we have some bounderies). So what we can do. At first we should not said that we are work in scrum because we have a daily. And the second think is yes daily meetings are usefull but not in all types of teams. In this article I will try to discribe one of the situation when the daily meeting is not needed.
What does it mean long term products?
In my work I was meet products whitch are develop many years. Work was started, plans was prepared and implementation was not finished. Of cource exists some milestones, product have some due dates and so one but finally when product was delivered then very offen exist some time where products are maintein or some small changes are just sometimes added. In this case team have regular meetings where they just discussed about day to day plans and problems but if we have a topics whitch can take fiew days and ours work is similar as we had day before then team spend time on a additional meeting whre they just could investigate some problems. Affter fiew months/years teams very often have some routine and they are just go to this meeting to said fiew words and they are just phisicle in the meeting but they are not listen. This is a typical problem when we have no involved peaople and we just checking the statuses.
What consequences could have forcing to daily meeting?
The main problem is situation where team is just bored and feel of nonsens. Motivation of the team could downcrease and day by day could be much lower. This is not just a problem with daily meeting but this could be one of the reason why this situation have a place. Routine is one of the worst think whitch we can have in a daily work and and if we have this situation than should something changed. Very often team leader could just change the formula of this meeting or in the extreme cases just stop doing this meeting.
How to fix the problem?
At first we should checked with a team what is wrong, what are the preferences of the team and how they see the situation. In many cases we could just for example reduce number of meetings, maybe change the formula or just agenda. Bellow I will present list of the solutions whitch could work:
- reduce number of meetings
- change the agenda of the meeting
- change order of the people whitch presenting
- more technical meetings
- use some atributes
Reduce number of meetings
In my daily work I saw problems of daily meetings and one of the reason was to much meetings, scrum teams very often start work by some meeting, then thay switch to another meeting and finally they are landing in daily meeting. This problem was increased when remote work was more propagated and even required. This type of problems reduce significantly time to do what development team was planned till next 24h. What could help in this case? One of the option is to not organise the daily meeting but from another side development team could have some problem with communication and show up new problem mening : duplication of the work. Ours daily meetings help in synchronisation betwean team members and avoid duplication of theirs work, for example one person prepare some class witch will represent some behaviour. In the same person had the same problem and prepare some similar solution but with different name. Finally we will receive two modules with two similar class. That’s why we should not avoid daily meeting but for example reduce frequency of the meetings for example 1 per 3 days.
Change agenda of the meetings
Second option of this meeting is maybe not only checking the status of the tasks whitch we have in sprint. Sometimes we can just do some small coffe talk whitch could take 5 minutes, people very often a litle bit wake up and they are more active in the latest part of a daily, in this case we avoid boring status meeting and change the formula from status meeting to not formal meeting. This change could be very helpfull if we work remotly and very often this is a only meeting in a day where we have a contact with team. This method help the team with planning theirs time + build better communication, strongest relation and help to create beter team.
More technical meetings
In my daily work I was meet aproach where team decided to reduce number of the meeting and make them more technical. Very often I received question what thas it mean more technical? That’s mean to create environment. give the team space to discussed about a problems whitch they have in theirs daily work on a product and maybe discussed about some architecture problems. This aproach required more then 15 minutes as we have described in a scrum guide that’s why teams could decide that they don’t want to have short meeting every day and they prefered to have for example two meetings per week. This approach could be very helpfull in the bigest projects where we have for example one or more years and problems whitch could show up could be a lot of and daily meetings could be not usefull.
Summary
As a ex scum master, software developer and current product owner I understand approach why we should daily meeting but I saw the problem witch are in work with a development teams and what can do the routine. A lot of teams have a problem that they work on product whitch take many months and even years and routine very often destroye the team. That’s why sometimes very helpful could be change the formula of this meeting or even reduce number of the meetings. On of the cost whitch we have in ours daily work are non productive meetings. I sawed people who go to daily meeting with words “why we go there” and to be honest I was understand that. That’s why the best method is just discussed with the team, in my work as a Scrum Master I was decided to not organise daily meeting, team was not come and not request for that and finally affter two weeks team come and sad that they want to have a daily because communication was not effective. So very often the main role of scrum master it’s just help the team to make theirs failures and learn by this. In a teams where they work fiew years on product problem with effective meeting is much more visible and much more painfull that’s why this is very importand to change something and exist plenty of methods whitch could help.