Image courtesy of: unsplash

I was surprised by how many of you replied saying that you didn’t necessarily disagree but asked what a product owner or Scrum Master could possibly say at a daily scrum. So that’s what I’d like to address this week.

During the daily scrum, a Scrum Master or product owner should report on anything the team may want to know about. It’s not so much about what they say as it is about their demonstrating that they are not above having to report on their progress.

I don’t want the product owner or Scrum Master to speak endlessly or talk about irrelevant things. So, fortunately, there are things they can talk about.

For example, a Scrum Master might:

• Comment about an impediment or two that was removed
• Mention facilitating a meeting with the product owner to demo something to stakeholders
• Mention setting up that important meeting for next Tuesday
• Mention cleaning up the product backlog in the tool based on the results of previous day’s product backlog grooming meeting

A product owner might comment on similar things, especially work involving the product backlog, stakeholders, users and so on.

I do want the product owner and Scrum Master to talk only about work affecting the current sprint. (I actually want everyone on the team to stick to the current sprint.) But, especially on a day when there is little else to report, a product owner might, for example, say something like, “I got a chance to think about the things I’d like us to work on next quarter.”

Again, it’s more about the fact that the product owner and Scrum Master speak versus what they say. So their updates can be very short. And after that, they may occasionally add something like, “And lots of other things that aren’t relevant to this sprint; but, wow, what a busy day.”

There will even be days when a Scrum Master or product owner (or, really, anyone on the team) may feel they have nothing to report. That’s fine. It will happen.

On those days, I’d prefer to have the person give a really brief update, basically saying that there is no update. Even saying something like, “I got nothing done yesterday. My old project needed something from me. I had some hardware problems. Ugh. Nothing to report.”

One last time: it’s more about that everyone hears them participate just like everyone else rather than allowing the product owner or Scrum Master to live by a different set of rules.

One team. One set of rules. And that will help you succeed with agile.