I am the ScrumMaster on our current project, and this morning I had to miss our Daily Scrum meeting. Our lead architect and I were invited to participate in a local Technology Incubator meeting that we felt was very important to our office's growth and development. When we returned to the office, the Team was hard at work diligently tackling the tasks on our current Sprint Backlog. I visited each Team member and asked "Did you guys do a Scrum today?" After some foot shifting, the general answer was "Um...no." I think they knew what was coming next. "So why didn't you Scrum?" "Well, you and Dave weren't here." So...what's wrong with this picture?

The Daily Scrum is a meeting at which the Team answers the three basic questions:

(1) What did you do yesterday?

(2) What are going to do today?

(3) Are there any impediments?

These three questions are intended to help the Team synchronize it's work and determine if anything is blocking them from making forward progress on their Sprint goal. They are not meant to be a status report to the ScrumMaster or the Product Owner. They are meant to be delivered by the Team, for the Team. The Daily Scrum should be a meeting where Team members commit to each other the work they are going to complete each day of the Sprint. The commitment should not be for the sake of the ScrumMaster, but for the sake of the entire Team.

ScrumMasters should do their best to be at every Daily Scrum. It shows a level of commitment by the ScrumMaster to the work the team is doing and demonstrates good leadership for the rest of the Team. However, on the rare occasions when the ScrumMaster cannot be present at the Daily Scrum, Team members should still conduct their Daily Scrum as usual. Each Team member should still answer the three questions.

The Daily Scrum should require no leader or ScrumMaster to ask questions and seek the answers. In fact, Mike Cohn has suggested in his Certified ScrumMaster training class that if an outsider observed a well oiled Scrum team during their Daily Scrum, s/he should not be able to distinguish who the ScrumMaster is. At every Daily Scrum, the Team should automatically begin answering the questions without prompting and without reporting to a ScrumMaster. This reinforces the idea that Scrum teams are self-managing and self-organizing by definition. It also emphasizes the fact that members of the Scrum team are comitted to each other and are collectively responsible for completing the tasks in each Sprint Backlog and for the success of the project.

On the flip side of the equation, it is equally important that a ScrumMaster understand his/her role at the Daily Scrum. ScrumMasters do not "run" the Daily Scrum meetings. They are there to record any impediments that need to be removed for the sake of the Team's progress on their tasks. The ScrumMaster also ensures that the "rules" of the Daily Scrum are being adhered to. The rules at our Daily Scrum are simple:

(1) Timeboxed to 15 minutes

(2) Answer the 3 questions

(3) Not a problem solving session

Beyond those three rules, the ScrumMaster should have no undue influence on the Daily Scrum.

The success of any Scrum Team's Daily Scrum depends on the level of comittment of the Team members to each other and to the project. It also depends on the ability of the ScrumMaster to truly accept a servant leader role during Daily Scrums. After all, the Daily Scrum is Scrum for the sake of all...Scrum gratia totus!