I want to share a core tenant of scrum that isn't in the scrum guide and most people don't cotton on to. Here goes: 'Meetings' are a time to do a specific thin

I want to share a core tenant of scrum that isn't in the scrum guide and most people don't cotton on to. Here goes: 'Meetings' are a time to do a specific thing. This seems very simple, but my own experience as a scrum master and in multiple a businesses trying to implement scrum, along with the gripes people have in this thread, show that most people just don't get it. So the answer to "why are we having this meeting?" is often very simple and I'll list all of the meetings and what their purpose is for your benefit. This way, when you find yourself doing something else during one of these meetings, you can safely assume that it's not scrum at fault, it's you and your crappy implementation of the process. > Planning, this is a meeting for planning. > Backlog, this is a meeting for grooming the backlog in preparation for planning. > Retrospective, this is a meeting for retrospectively looking at the sprint to improve the process for the next sprint. > Standup, this is a quick daily checkup for each team member's progress, planned actions and blockers. Notice how Standup doesn't include "this is a meeting for small amounts of planning." That's because it's not there, you're not meant to do planning in standup, there's a meeting for that. So, if you need to do post-planning on a task it's not ready for pickup. Easy so far right? Now the bit that people struggle with. If you've achived the meeting goal, there's no need for a post standup checkup about where someone's at. So people can do their job knowing that the "hey where did you get to with X" question isn't going to disrupt them from 09:15 onwards. Hey! That sounds great... but 15 minutes is 15 minutes I hear you say. The "time to do a specific thing" is the most efficient way of achieving that specific thing. That's the point of these meetings and why a successful implementation of scrum is more efficient that your other crappy process.