For the daily scrum, is it correct to say "A standup meeting is about answers, not questions"?
Or another statement: "A standup is to talk about the What, not the How or Why"?
I feel that the "why" may play a part in the daily scrum, but has to be controlled so not to take up too much time.
I am in a small- to medium-sized business, trying to teach daily standups. I am trying to pull together some phrases for everyone to think about when participating in a daily scrum.
The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to quickly get all developers on the same page.
So I would go so far as to say the opposite: that questions are fine, but answers not. For example:
"I'm having trouble decalibrating the fronkilator."
"Oh, I think I know what your problem is. We'll go over it after the meeting."
At which point only those interested/involved need stick around after the meeting, while everyone else can get back to their work.
The same for how/why; it's fine to bring up that you need to know how/why something is done. It's not fine to derail the meeting with a lengthy answer.
Recall that as per the Scrum Guide, the minimum Development Team size is 3 members, and the timebox for the Daily Scrum is 15 minutes - this means that each person should be speaking no more than 5 minutes each. For larger Teams, that number likewise goes down: 3 minutes for teams of 5, <2 minutes for teams of 8.
Don't get hung up on specific rules like "you shouldn't be formatting your Daily Scrum statement like that." Instead just focus on the two goals of the Daily Scrum: to get all Development Team members on the same page, and to last no longer than 15 minutes.
