[Scrum Anti-Patterns] Daily Scrum: Does it must be held at the beginning of day

I got interesting questions about Daily Scrum and would like to share it today. Some people asked me a question about "hold Daily Scrum at the beginning of the day", let’s go into the details of this case:

- Scrum Master asked the team to have daily Scrum at the beginning of the day.

- The reason he wants to have Daily Scrum at beginning of the day is: He thought Daily Scrum must be held at early of day and it also brings one benefit that people go to office right time, and people can start to work right after the meeting.

- In the beginning, a team is following, but after that: Team is usually late in the morning and it hard to have a full team in Daily Scrum in the morning - Alway have some members late. After that, he set some rules with the team but doesn’t work. (E.g when a team member get to Daily Scrum late, the rest of the team have to pay the fine for this late member)... some team members still late.

- Daily Scrum just like a status report, the team do it with motion and bring no value.

What is the value of Daily Scrum?​
Let's look back on the Scrum guide first before we go through all of the items above:


"The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team. To reduce complexity, it is held at the same time and place every working day of the Sprint. If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers." - Scrum Guide 2020

From Scrum Guide 2020, Daily Scrum is an event for developer so: Does Scrum Master need to define when it happens? Or the Developers will know what time is best for them, right?

Imaging this situation. if 1 Scrum team have Developers at 2 locations, one in Uk and one in Viet Nam, time overlap is only 3 hours. So which time is best for 2 teams to have a meeting to align and plan their work for the next 24 hours? Is it in the morning? I think no.

I believe you have an answer... Yes! When, Where and How Developers do Daily Scrum is defined by the Developers as they know which is the best for them as they know How to build working Software. No one can tell them how to do it. As Scrum Master, you only need to make sure a team have Daily Scrum and coach them to maximize the value of Scrum on Daily Scrum.

Using Daily Scrum like a "Time Checking Tool" or "Status Report" is a wrong mindset, it will not help but make everything more terrible. The team will start to hide an issue or impediment and this lead to lacking transparency and lost a chance to Inspect and Adapt a daily plan of Developer. Collaboration and self-management will be impacted following that.

NOTE: Updated follow Scrum guide 2020