The One Day Per Sprint You Should Skip the Daily Scrum

Today’s tip is about saving you time by reducing the amount of time you and your teammates may spend in meetings. Since the tip is about saving you time, I’ll save you further time by keeping this tip short.

My tip is:

Don't do a daily scrum on sprint planning day.

Most teams end the sprint planning meeting with team members selecting the one or two things they’ll do immediately after the meeting. This is kind of like a miniature daily scrum. And it’s all you need.

Having each team member share what they’ve done since the prior daily scrum is usually not necessary. Everyone probably did the same two things:

• Wrapped up the work of the prior sprint (hopefully, successfully)
• Spent one to eight hours together in the planning meeting (depending on the length of the sprint) Talking about activities all team members should already be aware of is unlikely to be helpful.

Further, the only impediments anyone will be facing will likely be discussed during the planning meeting itself.

Remember that the goal of a daily scrum is for team members to synchronize their effort. Everyone should be fully in sync from the sprint planning meeting, making a subsequent, distinct daily scrum unnecessary.

Having everyone in sync at the end of the sprint planning meeting, such that they don’t need a daily scrum that day, will help your team succeed with agile.