Tool Mentor: Holding a Daily Scrum with Rational Team Concert
Ensure the team is making progress and that there are no blockers.

Synopsis

In the Daily Scrum the team shares progress made since the last Scrum, what they will do today until the next Scrum, and what is impeding their work.

Value 

The Daily Scrum is for coordination and is used to foster team communication and collaboration. It helps ensure that the development team meets the Sprint Goal.

Prepare

Step Tool guidance

1. Send out invitations

The Scrum Master arranges a regular time and place for the meeting, and sends out meeting invitations.  (Note that the Scrum Guide only specifies that the Scrum Master is responsible to ensure that the Daily Scrum occurs - we have added this step for clarity on how this can be done).

See Meetings and Rational Team Concert for general guidance on preparing and conducting meetings.

2. Regularly update tasks and stories 

Each team member is self driven and ensures that their tasks are in the correct position on the task board. On a physical task board, the team members move their sticky notes. On a virtual task board, the team members update task status.

Each team member updates time remaining, and corrects the estimate if less or more time is required to complete the task.

The Scrum Master (or designated story owner), updates the status of the stories to In Development or Done depending on the status of the child tasks.

Open the Sprint task board:

  • Click Plans > All Plans >[Sprint name]
  • Set View As to Taskboard

Some actions you can perform on a task are:

  • Drag a task from one column to another to update status.
  • Click the time-remaining dropdown and choose a new time remaining.
  • Click the Actions icon and select Edit Work Item. A pop-up window appears where the task can be edited.

Some actions you can perform on a story in the taskboard view are:

  • Click the status and select a new status from the dropdown.
  • Click the Actions icon and select Edit Work Item. A pop-up window appears where the story can be edited.

Open the Sprint storyboard:

  • Click Plans > All Plans >[Sprint name]
  • Set View As to Storyboard

Some actions you can perform on a story in the storyboard view are:

  • Drag a story from one column to another to update status.
  • Click the Actions icon and select Edit Work Item. A pop-up window appears where the story can be edited. 

Also see Updating work items in the web client.


Conduct

The development team performs the following steps.

Step Tool guidance

1. Facilitate the daily scrum

Any development team member can facilitate the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum should be conducted in 15 minutes or less.

Open the Sprint task board:

  • Click Plans > All Plans >[Sprint name]
  • Set View As to Taskboard

2. Each development team member provides input

Explain:

  1. This is what I did yesterday to help meet the Sprint goal 
  2. This is what I am going to do today to help meet the Sprint goal 
  3. This is what is impeding my progress to meet the Sprint goal. 

3. Capture impediments and risks 

Capture any impediments or identified risks. Do not stop to diagnose the problems. Simply capture the issue and keep moving.

Capture notes in the “notes” tab of the Sprint plan.  See Creating plan notes.


Follow-up

The designated facilitator creates any additional work items (typically some tasks, risks, and/or impediments) based on the notes taken during the meeting.  For more information see Meetings and Rational Team Concert.

More information

See Rational Team Concert tutorial: Hold Daily Scrum for detailed step-by-step guidance. Also see this demo.