​About The Daily Scrum

I. Participating Roles

We will divide most projects into multiple virtual teams according to their characteristics. Each team has a relatively fixed number of members, including the Product Development Manager (PDM), Development Engineer (DE), Test Engineer (TE), and Project Manager (PM). In a virtual team, the PM acts as a manager to ensure the normal operation of the team.

The virtual team's structure is shown in the figure below, and it will finally report to PDMO.

Analysis of related terms:

• PDM: Product Development Manager
• PDMO: Product Development Manager Owner'
• DE: Development Engineer
• TE: Test Engineer
• PM: Project Manager

II. Setting the Host

In the early days of the virtual team, the PM must act as the Host and be responsible for maintaining the normal operation of the morning meeting. After the team has gone through a running-in period, the Host can be rotated. In the past 2 years, each virtual team has had a different approach to the morning meeting, and here I summarize what the Host needs to do.

1. The host needs to convene the meeting on time. The meeting time can be set between 9:30-10:00 so that we can make clear the work arrangement of the day.

2. The Host needs to supervise the participating members. PM, PDM, DE, and TE must participate in the meeting to ensure consistency and real-time information synchronization.

3. The Host needs to supervise the speech, making sure that everyone's speech includes "what they did yesterday," "what they will do today," and "what difficulties they encountered."

4. The Host needs to solve the difficulties. For those who encounter difficulties, the Host needs to implement solutions. The Host can speak: "Who can help look at this question?" Or "A, can you assist B in looking at this problem?" As for the specific plan, the moderator needs to leave the relevant people alone to discuss it separately after the morning meeting instead of at the morning meeting.

5. The Host needs to control the time, making sure that everyone speaks for about 1 minute and that the morning meeting is within 15 minutes to avoid discussing details in the morning meeting.

6. The Host needs to be clear about the day's goals. After taking turns to speak, the Host needs to summarize the day's goals, and tomorrow the Host will check and accept according to the previous day's goals to avoid schedule delay.

The above are the basic responsibilities of the host, who can host the morning meeting well as long as they do so. In the past, there were some excellent hosts on the team：

• Bad joke: They tell a bad joke before the meeting to liven up the atmosphere.
• Personal sharing: They share for 5 minutes before the meeting, and this method is suitable for small teams of less than 7 people. The Host can freely play the content of the sharing. This session effectively improves team cohesion and promotes team member relationships in a very short period. Interestingly, because everyone's interests are different, personal sharing gradually extends to many ranges. For example, personal inspirational stories about the I Ching, detective novels, life Baike, Sinology dance, etc. In the process of sharing, everyone's ability to tell stories has been improved, and it also promotes emotional exchange, which is very good.
• RTX or email output the content of the morning meeting
• Real-time update on progress

III. Speak Token

In the morning meeting, everyone takes turns speaking, which is conventional. In this way, there will be several problems:

• Their statements are very formalistic;
• People who speak later do not concentrate;
• People who have spoken will discuss together and not listen to those who speak later.

Later, we optimized the morning meeting and added Speak Token. We prepare a small doll. We use the penguin doll rule here: only the person holding the doll can speak. If you want to speak, you need to raise your hand to receive the doll before you can speak. After speaking, you can throw the doll at anyone who has not spoken.

Example: A holds a doll and throws it to B. During B's speech, C needs to help B solve the difficulties. When B finishes speaking, C raises his hand to indicate that he needs to speak. Then B throws the doll to C, and C starts to speak. Note: We must throw out dolls at will, which has two functions: the uncertainty allows everyone to concentrate on preparing for the speech, and the other is to increase interest in the morning meeting, especially in the morning. It has a refreshing effect.

IV. Setting the Number of People

The number of people in the morning meeting should be less than 15, preferably around 10. This is because if there are too many people, even if there is a host, it is difficult to ensure the effectiveness of the morning meeting. If the team is large, it is recommended to adopt the method of the layered morning meeting. For example, we can divide the team into several groups. Groups A, B, and C will hold morning meetings respectively, and then each of A, B, and C will send a representative to hold another morning meeting to exchange the group's work. There are many ways to organize morning meetings in different layers. Just mentioned is one of them. You can also organize morning meetings according to your actual situation.

V. Progress Wall

We can imagine that if 10 people are finished saying, "what did I do yesterday," "what will I do today," or "what difficulties did I encounter," it is estimated that no one will remember it in the morning meeting. People who are not directly related to the speaker are even less aware of what he did. The pure verbal description will greatly reduce the transmission of information. Therefore, we need to combine the progress wall for the meeting. Currently, we use the Scrum progress wall method. (We tried Toyota's Lean Kanban solution before and found it was too complicated and inconvenient to maintain, so we finally gave it up.)