Daily stand-up

Oh oh.

I fell into a trap. You know that kind of traps you know of, but don't realize you're right in the middle of it? Well, I think it happened to me right now. 

I'm always aware, or at least I thought I always was, that a scrum master is a coach and not a lead. Well here's my confession (Hmm it sounds like  a catholic confessional), I always take the lead in the stand-up. Oh oh.

What is a stand-up?

Let's take a look at what the stand-up really is. In real basics it's this:

1. Awareness about the sprint and especially what's not been done yet,
2. A small planning, only for one whole day, about how to be as effective as possible on the user stories left.
3. (not a goal, but an outcome: be transparent to the product owner and stakeholders on the status)

So basically, as a developer (remember that a developer is a member of the scrum team, so testers included) you need to tell what the progress is on the user story you've been working on and need to know the progress others have been working on. You need to know, as a team, how to be as smart as possible on finishing the user stories left on top of the remaining sprint backlog.

In short you have to do these things, according to the user story you are working on:

1. Talk with your fellow developers what the status is of 'your' user story.
2. Find out what needs to be done to finish 'your' user story. (short comment: this can only be done when you have small user stories. If you got large ones, it makes no sense discussing the whole thing)
3. Set a clear goal on 'your' user story and create an efficient plan how to work together to get things done.

Take the lead!

As a developer working on 'your' user story, take the lead in discussing it! Because you're kind of an expert on it, since you're the one working on it. The ones working on the user story are kind of first responsible. Discuss how you feel about the user story, what you need from outside the team, who can help you most, or what do you think will happen. Be aware of your job!