Daily Stand Up — Managing Outsiders

Daily Stand Up Visitors

I have worked with scrum teams where ‘outsiders’ like to attend and see whats going on. Sometimes they are just silent observers who just like to see whats going on, but do you ever get visitors who start to contribute, butt in, even disrupt the meeting?

If you are a scrum master, how do you deal with these scenarios, what if the visitor is a senior manager or the CEO? Should you tell them to be quiet?

Dealing with Visitors

My advise would be to before the meeting starts and you have visitors; start by reminding everyone about the scheduled part of the meeting, and then any questions or feedback can occur after.

Start with something like “Welcome to the daily stand up, we will start with the scheduled part of the meeting with the daily update. Then after if any of the observers have any questions these can be addressed after”.

I think its a good way to start the meeting and set the ‘ground rules’ for the next 15 minutes.

You might actually find that most of the questions will be answered during the meeting, and any other questions can be directed to the development team, product owner or scrum master. Anyone who is not impacted can leave and move on with their day.

Impact on the Meeting

If you notice that the feel of the meeting has changed due to frequent visitors, then you probably need to speak to them privately and ask that they reduce their visits.

And the end of the day, its a team meeting. The benefit is for the team. During the meeting, everyone needs to be comfortable and there needs to be complete transparency in order to have an effective scrum team.

As a scrum master, its your job to facilitate the meeting, making sure it runs smoothly and managing the fine line with making the meeting effective for the team and managing participation from people outside the team.

This post was originally posted on: theproducthub.io
https://www.theproducthub.io/2020/10/18/daily-stand-up-managing-outsiders/
Please check my site to get the latest articles first!

About the Author

Product Leader. Over 10 years in product development; with experience in product management, UX & UI, product design, product & delivery methodologies and product leadership. A strong advocate in innovation, experimentation and building great products with the use of qualitative and quantitative research, putting an emphasis on a customer centric design and approach.

Website: www.theproducthub.io

Twitter: www.twitter.com/achardypm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theproducthubio

LinkedIn: mt.linkedin.com/in/achardypm

Medium: medium.com/@achardypm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theproducthub.io/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/achardypm

SlideShare: slideshare.net/ashlychrstn

--

--

Product leader. A strong advocate in innovation, experimentation and building great products with the use of qualitative and quantitative research.

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Ashley-Christian Hardy

Product leader. A strong advocate in innovation, experimentation and building great products with the use of qualitative and quantitative research.