Retroflection is a project started nearly 2 years ago by Yves Hanoulle. The idea is to (frequently) tweet something to think about, related to agile software development.
Today’s tweet: “question 658 Why are you reporting to the Scrum Master in your stand-up?”
I was a bit surprised when I read the question. Particularly the way it is phrased leaves me with an image of one of the most common misunderstandings in agile and in particular with the daily stand-up. There are 2 elements in that question that I’ll address. First of all the reporting aspect and secondly the direction of that.
Bold statement number one: stand-ups are not for reporting
I’ve been in one too many stand-ups where people come in, ramble off their prepared answer to the 3 questions (what have you done yesterday? What will you do today? What’s blocking you?) and shoot back to their desks straight after. Those 3 questions have a purpose and it’s often missed. The first question is aimed at uncovering problems early on in the process. If you ran into a problem, are getting way off track, got interrupted all the time, … those are the things that the question is trying to uncover. If all went okay and you are making good progress and finishing what you aimed at, the answer should really just be “On story Z, did what I set out to do, all went well”. It’s by no means the time, nor the place, to give a detailed recap of your day.
The question about what you’ll do today is where I expect a bit of a breakdown of what problems you’ll tackle and some pretty good idea of what you’ll finish or how far you hope to get along in that solution. This is also the point where you can throw out some ideas on your approach. Again, don’t get into the nitty gritty details of that but a line of thinking or simply saying you’d like someone to sit with you and talk through it are great points for this question. It’s also the place where other people can maybe point you in a direction or in general make sure that they are not creating too many problems (for instance by being in the process of changing the interface you’re coding against).
The final question is a direct hit at stuff that is blocking you. That could be anything ranging from IT problems or the sales guy next door being too loud to being stuck on a particularly hard piece of code or some area of the project that’s new to you. The point here is that it will most often be direct actions for the scrum master to make sure these problems go away (how the scrum master does that is besides the point here…for now just assume it involves magic powers).
Last thing to point out, teams frequently let stand-ups get to 20 or more minutes and it becomes a bit of drag. If you answer the questions towards the nature of why they’re there I found that stand-ups often only take a few minutes and hardly ever run beyond 10 minutes (even on 10+ teams).
Bold statement number two: you report to no individual and definitely not to the scrum master
As I tried to point out above, the stand-up isn’t about reporting but rather about making sure that problems are uncovered quickly and that you also get the benefit of full knowledge in the team. That is essentially why you are not giving a status report. Many people I talk to have the impression that a stand-up is a new management trick to monitor their daily activity. It’ s not 
All you do is share in the team where you are. Remember that it is the team who commits to the stuff in a sprint, so equally so it’s important that as a team you reach that goal. Because of that commitment, it’s important that everyone in the team understands the progress (yes, burndowns show this too). So you are not reporting to an individual, you are just being part of a team that set out to achieve the goals of a sprint.
Special mention for the scrum master…the scrum master role is there to ensure that the process is followed. He is a mediator in the stand-up. He’ll make sure you don’t get into an hour long technical discussion between 2 members, takes impediments out of the meeting, keeps an eye on the scrum board,…. So there really is no point in telling specifically to him what you did since he has no vested interest in achieving the sprint goals, only in making sure the team can achieve those in the best possible conditions.
Hi Klaas,
Thanks for writing about Retroflection.
You made me realize we are already going for 2 years, wow.
Luckily for me, it’s not just me anymore. We have a lot of people inventing questions.
I have no idea what Rob’s intention was with this question, I selected the question exactly for the answer you gave.
As I walk around in lots of companies I see exactly this happening.
People reporting to a scrummaster. When I am that scrum master and I notice this behavior, I start to look outside the window. Or I set myself outside the circle.
Yes a daily standup is for the team and not for the SM.
Is it reporting, I find a little harder to answer.
In a way it is a report to your teammembers on the three questions.
And I agree with you that when I hear reporting, I think about boring status reports.
Daily standups supposed to be fun, and quick.
Hi Yves,
I should be thanking you and the people contributing questions, I really enjoy it!
On the reporting aspect. I agree that there is indeed an element of reporting in it, but I think it is reporting in the literal sense (i.e. “to give an account or representation of in words”). My experience has been that many people indeed do think about detailed boring status reports when they hear the term. I just wanted to make sure that there was no confusion.
An earlier draft actually said “all you do is report to the team on where you are”, but I ultimately replaced that by “share where you are” for the sake of clarity.
And yes, stand-ups should be fun and quick!