Agile QuickTip: Achievement Focused Daily Scrum

Achievement Focused Daily Scrum

If you’re feeling like your daily Scrum or Stand-up is getting less valuable, and losing some of its effectiveness, why not turn things around by changing the focus to achievements rather than activities?

Most Agile team’s Stand-ups or Scrums focus pretty heavily on activities. Questions asked in the daily Scrum include activity focused queries such as:

• What did I work on yesterday or today?
• What’s my plan for today or tomorrow?
• What’s stopping me from doing these activities or tasks?

This can work well for some time, but it also can make teams quite task oriented or task focused, and stop team members thinking more broadly about what they are accomplishing and how to add value.

Sometimes it can be helpful to reorient your meetings around achievements instead of activities. Questions that you could ask during an achievement-oriented daily Scrum or Stand-up include:

• What did I achieve yesterday or today?
• What do I plan to achieve today or tomorrow?
• What is likely to be the challenge in the way of achieving these goals?

Immediately, with this change in focus, teams are thinking about and discussing goals rather than activities. In turn, this allows each team member and the Scrum as a whole to deliver more value.

Our Agile QuickTips are simple, one-minute ideas that can revolutionize your existing Agile teams and implement quick changes that help them to be a whole lot more valuable. Make sure you haven’t missed any of our Agile QuickTips by browsing the back catalogue on our website ThinkLouder.com or subscribing to our YouTube channel. You can also join the ThinkLouder community by following me on Instagram or on Twitter, @Giora Morein.