A meeting every single day to talk about what everyone's been doing, will be doing and can't get done... talk talk talk instead of work work work... total waste of everyone's time."
That's the typical kind of extreme resistance Scrum Masters face when scheduling the Daily Scrum.
So how best to react? With solid, fact based coaching thats makes the case in favour of the Daily Scrum overwhelmingly.
Resistance # 1
"All this talking is too much... enough already."
Even in a team with great internal communications it's rare for the entire team to get together and speak together. The Daily Scrum is that opportunity and knowing that team wide conversation is going to happen, every day, like clockwork, actually cuts down on other time wasting one to one conversation. People save it for the Daily Scrum!
Resistance #2
"No really big issues ever gets raised."
Communication is everything. A daily state of play update is always going to bring something of value, it may just be you don't realise it at the time. And really, getting those speed bumps dealt with way ahead of time because they are raised at a Daily Scrum can stop them turning into a really big problem. So, in a high performing Scrum Team big issues may never be raised in the Daily Scrum because they were solved when they were just little glitches along the way.
Resistance #3
"Every single time the same people do all the talking."
This does happen. But it's a process issue not a reason to abandon the Daily Scrum. Any Scrum Master worthy of the title should have the tact, skill and knowledge to restore the value in a Daily Scrum by facilitating a reset of how the meeting takes place. This doesn't mean taking over and running the show, it means nudging the Team back on track to the point where everyone has an equal voice.
Resistance #4
"Unless everyone is working in the same building the whole thing is impossible anyway"
Not all teams are in easy reach of each other... fact. Having said that, it's a truly terrible reason to abandon the Daily Scrum just because you can't all swing by the same coffee stand on the way. Of course in an ideal world you should always be able to just ease on over to someone’s workspace and chew over some problem face-to-face. But we are all in a new normal and the exponential rise in working from home has graphically shown how it's possible to maintain open and effective communications regardless.
The New Normal
Making contact with your colleagues has rarely been more vital. To keep pulling in the same direction, to keep focus when there are a million distractions, to keep out of trouble by getting just a little help from your friends. That's a lot of weight to carry for just 15 minutes out of every day but that's the Daily Scrum, cherish its worth, be open, honest and supportive for that 1/4 hour. Resistance IS useless.
RedAgile are Australia's leading Agile Scrum training provider certified by the Scrum Alliance. As Australia's best Scrum training provider we offer Agile Scrum training courses and consulting services both online and in-person. Our training portfolio includes: Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) as well as our new Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM) and Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO) courses.
