The Scale Daily Scrum is a very important part of Scrum@Scale. First off, you don’t need a Scale Daily Scrum if you just have one Scrum Team. And also, if you have a couple of Scrum Teams but they are so dispersed inside of your large organization that they don’t have any contact, they don’t have any magnetism between them because they don’t need to work together, you don’t need the Scale Daily Scrum. You can just stick to the Daily Scrum inside of your teams.

However, if you have a couple of teams that are working together — such as, let’s say, five teams working together on some functionality — and they have to work very closely together because they’re working on the exact same thing and one team isn’t enough, then it might make very good sense to actually hold the Scale Daily Scrum event.

What it basically is: it’s a mirror of the Daily Scrum, just on a more abstract, scaled level. In your Daily Scrum, what do you do? You replan, you share knowledge, you raise impediments. And this is exactly what the Scale Daily Scrum does — only at a higher level. It has the exact same functions, but instead of having the team members together with a Scrum Master and Product Owner as happens in the Daily Scrum, what you’ll have is delegates from those five Scrum Teams meeting up together and holding their Scale Daily Scrum.

When I say delegates, it usually tends to be the Scrum Masters — this is the easy go-to. But it means you can also bring or send somebody else. For example, I’m not a technical person. If I cannot even explain something, I don’t need to go there myself; I can just bring somebody along or send someone more technical.

A good practice is to have the Scale Daily Scrum happen immediately after the Daily Scrum. So, let’s say those five teams have their Daily Scrums at nine, then the Scale Daily Scrum happens at 9:15. All the Scrum Masters meet there, and the Scale Daily Scrum is being led by the Scrum of Scrum Master.

The Scrum of Scrum Master is a more experienced Scrum Master. You don’t want to have the junior guy that just started out leading that meeting. This is usually a person who can actually solve impediments on a higher level. Because if the teams are not able to solve an impediment by themselves — which they should try to do — they bring it to the Scale Daily. Maybe one of the other Scrum Masters already has a solution, but if not, the Scrum of Scrum Master is supposed to run with it and try to solve it.

If you’re interested in learning more about Scrum@Scale and how the Scale Daily Scrum works, I run regular seminars on this topic. You can find out more at teamflow.de