I have noticed over the years in daily stand up meetings that there seems to be two common forms of answer to the standard Scrum questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you doing today?
- Are you blocked by anything?
The first type is the concise answer which is in my mind the ideal answer, one that provides the necessary information in the minimum amount of time without any excess fluff.
The other type is the rambling answer that attempts to contextualise itself but really just drowns in excess information. I have even witnessed people using the questions as a chance to rant at their (effectively) captive audience or as a chance to start discussion. Discussion is a good thing but not during a daily stand-up with the whole team listening into to a few individuals discuss something, that gets old fast. Have your discussion after the meeting to spare those that are not required.
These two different styles of answers can make or break the scrum experience for the participants: too many ramblers in a stand-up meeting can make the daily meetings feel like a sentence instead of a chance to find out what everyone else is doing. The purpose of these daily stand-up meetings is to: update the rest of your team on your state: what you did yesterday, what you are working on today and any work blocking issues you are experiencing.
The goal is team wide visibility into the state of development and the corner stone of it is quick efficient short daily meetings. So keep those answers as concise as possible, this will require thought on your part to compose your answers before its your turn but your co-workers will appreciate it!
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