Agile QuickTip: Schedule Sync Time Before the Daily Scrum

Have you considered how ensuring you have some sync time scheduled before your daily scrum might make for an overall better stand up?

One of the constant challenges for agile or scrum teams is making sure that the daily stand up is concise, focused and valuable. Far more often it takes longer than we’d like — much more than the 10 or 15 minutes. This is sometimes because team members get lost in the details or find themselves too deep into the weeds.

This can be particularly problematic when it comes to teams that live and work across different time zones. The problem is exacerbated when the scrum meeting is scheduled for first thing in the day for some members of the team. While some team members have been sleeping, others have been working. Questions and queries have been piling up and the daily Scrum becomes the very first opportunity to reconnect and get answers. These are often individual, or 1-on-1 dialogues that don’t typically involve the entire team.

To combat this issue, try pushing back the daily scrum – just 15 or 30 minutes – and schedule some ‘sync-up’ time prior to the Scrum. This provides a time in which team members can individually sync up with other specific team members or get particular questions answered before the team Scrum begins. Once in the Scrum, the team can then focus on group updates, making the entire process much smoother, focused and more valuable for everyone.

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