Daily Scrum &

Tracking Progress

Benjamin Day
Coach, Trainer, Author, Speaker, Architect

@benday | www.benday.com
 What is the Daily Scrum?
What is it for?
Overview
Shape of Your Work
Team vs. individual accountability
Risk management
Minimizing Work In Progress (WIP)
Feature branches
Impediment tracking
Azure DevOps demos
Up Next:

What is the Daily Scrum?

What is the Daily Scrum?
 Event in Scrum
Happens every day
Daily Scrum
15 minutes or less
Team’s daily opportunity to inspect and adapt
 "The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect
What does the progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the
Scrum Guide say? Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the
upcoming planned work."
 Not required to be there
What does the
Not required to lead this meeting
Scrum Master do
at the Needs to make sure…
- It happens
Daily Scrum?
- It’s productive
 Boring
Waste of time
Worthless
What do I hear Pointless
from teams?
Too long
‘I get nothing out of it’
‘Just another useless meeting’
It doesn’t have to be that
way!
It shouldn’t be that way.
 Development Team
Discuss how they’re doing on delivery
- Sprint Goal
- Done, working software
What is the - Inspect
Daily Scrum Adjust their plan
for? - Adapt the Sprint Backlog

Identify any Impediments

Identify risks to delivery
Big Goal: Collaboration
 Not a status meeting
Not about holding individuals accountable
What ISN’T the - “What did you do yesterday?”
Daily Scrum
Not about shaming people into being
for? productive

Not a problem-solving meeting

 It’s a sign something is wrong
Organizing your work in a weird way
Focusing on individual accountability
- Hint: you want Team accountability
Boring or useless
Daily Scrum? Wrong questions
Wrong conversations
Wrong focus

Status meeting
 The team is focused on the team
The team is focused on the Sprint Goal

When things are Everyone is engaged

going right in the Meeting has purpose and focus

Daily Scrum… Everyone knows what’s going on
Everyone is up to date on the plan
Delivery plan in Azure DevOps is accurate
‘Scrum Master Skills’ at Pluralsight

Check out the “Better Scrum” module

https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/
scrum-master-skills
Up Next:

Boredom, Work in Progress, Risk, &

Accountability
Boredom, Work in Progress, Risk, &
Accountability
‘Scrum Master Skills’ at Pluralsight

Check out the “Better Scrum” module

https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/
scrum-master-skills
Boring Daily
“I don’t care what anyone else says.”
Scrum
 “I don’t get much out of it.”
Useless Daily “I don’t get anything out of it.”
Scrum
“It really could just be an email.”
 “What did you do yesterday?”
“What are you going to do today?”
3 Questions “Any impediments?”
Format

The problem: it’s all about “you”

 “What did you do yesterday to help the team
get closer to the Sprint Goal?”
“What are you going to do today to help the
team get closer to the Sprint Goal?”
Modified 3
Questions Format “Are you aware of any impediments for the
team getting to the Sprint Goal?”

Better but still about “you”

 Discuss the items on the Scrum Board
- Scrum Board = visualization of the Sprint
Backlog
Walking the
The Daily Scrum becomes focused on the
Board work & plan rather than individual
contributions
(I’ll demo this in a bit.)
You probably have too
much Work In Progress
(WIP)
 The team is working on too many things at one
time
Too Much WIP
Not getting to “Done” fast enough
 Probably focusing on individual accountability
Individual delivery of PBIs
Why Too Much
Each person takes a PBI…
WIP?
…we’ll all meet up at the end when our stuff is
done
 Daily Scrum is boring
Nobody else cares what you’re doing…

“We each work on …until it’s time to integrate

our own PBI.” “I’m busy over here.”

“Just get your stuff done.”
“Oh…and don’t break my stuff.”
 Boring Daily Scrum
Lonely
- Are you really a team?

Downsides of Limited cross-training

Working This Way Risky
- Takes longer
- Much higher risk that you deliver nothing

Slower, less frequent delivery of ‘Done’ work

 2 week sprint
4 person team

4 PBIs in the Sprint

Delivery as a Work on top priority item in the Sprint

Team Make it ‘Done’ as a team

Move on to the next priority item

You deliver something to done 4x in the Sprint
Cycle time: ~2.5 days per PBI
 2 week sprint
4 person team

4 PBIs in the Sprint

Delivery as Everyone takes a PBI

Individuals Works on their PBI individually

Everything ready on last day of the Sprint

Delivered to ‘Done’ once
Cycle time: ~14 days per PBI
Team Delivery vs. Individual Delivery
Day Items in Day Items in
Progress Progress
Day 1 A Day 1 A, B, C, D
Day 2 A Day 2 A, B, C, D
Day 3 A, B Day 3 A, B, C, D
Day 4 B Day 4 A, B, C, D
Day 5 B Day 5 A, B, C, D
(weekend) (weekend)
Day 8 C Day 8 A, B, C, D
Day 9 C Day 9 A, B, C, D
Day 10 C, D Day 10 A, B, C, D
Day 11 D Day 11 A, B, C, D
Day 12 D Day 12 A, B, C, D
(weekend) (weekend)
Stuff Goes Bad: Team Delivery vs. Individual Delivery
Day Items in Day Items in
Progress Progress
Day 1 A Day 1 A, B, C, D
Day 2 A Day 2 A, B, C, D
Day 3 A, B Day 3 A, B, C, D
Day 4 B Day 4 A, B, C, D
Day 5 B Day 5 A, B, C, D
(weekend) (weekend)
Day 8 C Day 8 A, B, C, D
Day 9
Day 10
BOOM!!!!
C
C, D
Day 9
Day 10
BOOM!!!!
A, B, C, D
A, B, C, D
Day 11 D Day 11 A, B, C, D
Day 12 D Day 12 A, B, C, D
(weekend) (weekend)
High WIP count à
Higher risk
 Lots of Work In Progress (WIP)
You’re focused on your work
Daily Scrum with Don’t care about other people’s work
Individual
Daily Scrum is a status meeting
Accountability - Takes time to get through everyone’s status
report
- Boring
 Minimal Work In Progress (WIP)
- 1 or 2 PBIs in progress
Everyone is working the same thing

“What’s our plan for getting to Done?”

Daily Scrum with - You care about what other people say
Team “What’s happening next?”
Accountability “How are we doing on delivery?”

More engagement
Meeting tends to naturally be shorter
Pro Tip:
Team accountability +
one thing at a time
Up Next:

How Does Azure DevOps Help During

the Daily Scrum?
How Does Azure DevOps Help During
the Daily Scrum?
 Inspect & Adapt
- Review the Sprint Goal
Goals at the - Inspect the plan
Daily Scrum - Adapt the plan

Identify any impediments

 Tracking & Visualization
Version Control integration with Work Items
- Branching & Merging
- Associating commits to work items
- Traceability
How Does Azure Boards
DevOps Help? - “Kanban” / Backlog Board
- Scrum Board
Burndown Chart

Impediment work item

Work item queries
Up Next:

Version Control, Branching, and

Merging
Version Control, Branching, and
Merging
 Features of version control
What’s a Branch?
Exists in Git and Team Foundation Version
What’s a Merge? Control (TFVC)
 Creates a logical relationship in version
control
- Parent à Child
Work on related code in isolation
Merge the code from Child to Parent
Branching
- Integration merge
- Change changes in finished code to parent
Merge the code from Parent to Child
- Refresh merge
- Get latest changes in Parent
Want More Detail on Version Control in Azure DevOps?
 Release Branch
- Get ready to release
- Release stabilization
Common - Support production bug fixes
Branching
Feature Branch
Strategies - Develop code for a PBI in a branch
- Risk mitigation
- Supports code reviews (“pull requests”)
Up Next:

Demo: Feature Branches from

Azure DevOps Boards
Demo
Create a branch for a PBI
Backlog Board
Feature branch
Up Next:

Demo: Scrum Board at the Daily Scrum

Demo
Use the Scrum Board at the Daily Scrum
“Walking the Board”
Visualize progress
Keep the plan up-to-date
Up Next:

Demo:
The Burndown Chart for the Sprint
Demo
Burndown Chart
Visualize progress towards ‘Done’
Assumes ‘Done’ means 0 hours of
remaining work
Up Next:

Impediments
Impediments
 Anything that slows the team down
Delays or risks delivery of Sprint Goal
Impediments
Delays or risks delivery of done, working
software
 Used to record the impediment
- Title
- Description
The Impediment - Actions taken
Work Item Type in - Status
Azure DevOps Strangely, it’s not that useful
Doesn’t appear on Boards
Requires you to write a Work Item Query
 Something is blocking progress on a PBI
- Blocked PBI
- Blocked Task
Most Common
I want to advertise that it’s blocked
Impediment: - Product Owner should know
Blocked Work - Scrum Master should know
- Developers should know

Transparency
 Task
- Set ‘Blocked’ field to ‘Yes’
- Only works on Tasks
Two Ways to - Confusing

Show ‘Blocked’ in Add ‘Blocked’ tag to a work item

Azure DevOps - Works on all work item types
- More flexible

I recommend the tag approach

Up Next:

Azure DevOps
Impediment Demos
Demo
Impediment Work Item
Create Impediments
Create a Work Item Query
Add an Impediment chart to dashboard
Up Next:

Demo:
Blocked Tasks
Demo
Show that a Task is blocked
Task work item
Use the ‘Blocked’ field
Add a styling rule to the Scrum Board
Up Next:

Demo:
Blocked Work Items using Tags
Demo
Show that a PBI or Task is blocked
Use a tag: ‘Blocked’
Add a styling rule to the Scrum Board
Add a styling rule to the Kanban Board
 What is the Daily Scrum?
What is it for?
Summary
Shape of Your Work
Team vs. individual accountability
Risk management
Minimizing Work In Progress (WIP)
Feature branches
Impediment tracking
Azure DevOps demos
Up Next:

Sprint Review & Retrospective