Reporting time!

Myth: The Daily is the team's status reporting meeting.
Variations:

• SM asks progress-related questions to individuals.
• Managers who need status updates can attend the Daily.

Follow-up myths:

• The Daily Scrum eliminates traditional progress reports

Category: Daily Scrum myths
Danger: Moderate

The basis of the myth

The Scrum guide says, "The Daily Scrum is held at the same time and place each day to reduce complexity. During the meeting, the Development Team members explain: * What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?" (and other questions)

Coming from a traditional project management perspective, people immediately equate this with a progress report.

Why is it a myth?

Daily Scrum has nothing to do with progress reporting. Especially not individual status reporting. And it's not the Scrum Master's responsibility to check on people. It's simply synchronization and (re-)planning.

Assumption #1: Activity status matters
Reports only help if an action is taken. The team autonomously decides on actions. Solutions are created by the self-organizing team and escalated when inevitable. "Activity status reports" are not a part of Scrum. They are un-necessary, because results are visible every few weeks.

Assumption #2: Daily Reports help

The team discusses the best course of action to reach the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Backlog is a good indicator of how close the team is to reaching this goal. And the Review is a great indicator of how well the goal was hit.
What reports should result in, is need for change. But this is the result of a Retrospective. So the Daily Scrum contributes nothing of relevance for management intervention.

Assumption #3: Utilization matters

The team should be collaborating. When a team member stays silent, this does not mean they did not do any work. We don't even want "activity statements" in the Daily. We want people to collaborate and discuss results, not how busy they are. There is absolutely no correlation between what a person says in the Daily Scrum and how much they do.

Consequences

Blather

When team members assume that they are being interrogated for performance, they will blather about how busy they are, but will not focus on the Sprint Goal. The entire Daily Scrum becomes a freak show rather than a goal-oriented meeting.

Me vs. Us

In the Daily Scrum, it's all about the Sprint Goal and how we, as a team, can reach it. "I" should not matter all that much. But when people feel that they need to prove what they contributed, "our" goal becomes irrelevant.

When the Daily Scrum is abused as a Reporting ceremony, it becomes pointless.

Remedies

The Scrum Master must clearly educate the team that Daily Scrum is not reporting, and how its character is different from traditional reporting.
The Scrum Master should definitely refrain from interrogating individuals, but rather provide the leeway for team members to speak only about what they feel comfortable with.

If managers eavesdrop on the Daily Scrum to "measure progress", they need to be educated on more valuable progress assessment opportunities, such as Sprint Reviews and Backlog status.

Should line managers abuse the Daily Scrum to check on individuals, the Scrum Master needs to educate them on the destructiveness of this behaviour. If this abuse does not stop, the manager must be invited out to enable a productive Daily Scrum.