Is The Daily Scrum Optional?

If you must ask, you’re not doing Scrum.

If they were optional, why would you have them at all?

If you’re too busy to attend, you’re not a team working on a scrum, you’re an individual fighting on your own.

Too many times, early in the formation of a team when I would be unable to attend a scrum people would ask, “Do we need to scrum?”. Yes! It’s not optional! Even when we talk all day long about the issues facing us as we work through our tasks, we still scrum! Even when we’re down a team member (or several) we scrum! We scrum because we have been so busy working our tasks. It brings us back to focus on the big picture — what were we going to accomplish, did we get done what we said we would, if not why not and looking ahead is there anything that will impede us?

I use the scrum to take a deep breath, refocus, check our progress, see as early as possible if we’re sliding to the right and deal with issues straight up before plunging back into the work I said I was going to do. Even if there are only two of you on the team, take the time to scrum, collect your thoughts, check your progress, realign or reaffirm and then get back to work!