Experiment: Use A Daily Goal With Your Scrum Team

Almost all Scrum.org PSM II classes I provide trigger the same conversation on Product- and Sprint Goals. Everyone agrees that in complex work, clear goals give guidance to what needs attention and what doesn’t (right now). They also see how goals are the glue that binds individuals into a team by giving them a shared purpose. A shared goal gives Scrum teams focus on what is important during a Sprint while allowing flexibility to adjust course and avoid emerging obstacles as needed. Shared goals are the foundation of the Scrum framework. It is what pulls everything together, and gives meaning and purpose to everything that happens in Scrum.

Or, as Christiaan Verwijs once described it:

“Product- and Sprint Goals are the lighthouses that help you reach the harbor through dense fog. Without them, you’re likely to get lost and run ashore.”

Despite the value everyone sees in using Sprint Goals, they aren’t common practice.

Why?

“We work on too many different things” 
“Our goal is always to finish the Sprint Backlog” 
“Our team isn’t suitable to focus on one goal”

Etcetera.

In this blog post, I’ll share an experiment that I’ve successfully used with several teams. In addition to a Sprint Goal, we would also define a daily goal. These teams not only focused each Sprint on one Sprint Goal, but they also identified one daily goal for the entire team, each day!

Seems impossible? Maybe… But it’s definitely worth a try. It’s a great way to improve collaboration, focus, and commitment. In general, it’s a perfect booster for team morale. It’s probably not difficult to find reasons why this won’t work for your team, but those reasons might also be symptoms of deeper problems in your team.

From product vision to a daily goal

Product Vision 👉 Product Strategy 👉 Product Goal 👉 Sprint Goal 👉 Daily Goal

That’s the ideal flow I recommend Scrum teams aim for. First, create a compelling vision for the product you’re building. Something that describes the future state of the product and what you hope the product will make possible. The product strategy is a rough plan that describes what the stakeholders & Scrum team(s) hope to accomplish with the product and how it plans to do so. This could involve creating a roadmap and a high-level release plan. Based on the product vision and strategy, the team defines a Product Goal, an objective the team wants to achieve in order to deliver value for their stakeholders. A Scrum team can use the Product Goal to craft smaller Sprint Goals. Each goal isn’t set in stone, this only happens at the last moment during Sprint Planning.

Each day, during the Daily Scrum, the team defines a daily goal. Something that encourages the entire team to collaborate and move closer to achieving the overarching Sprint Goal. It’s the one goal the team wants to achieve at a minimum. Whatever happens, achieving the daily goal should be the primary focus. And even if not all team members are fully occupied with tasks related to the daily goal, it does give the team a laser focus during the day.

I can imagine that at this point you might want specific examples of Product- and Sprint Goals. If so, read this blog post by Christiaan. He offers many great examples based on a real-life development effort when working with a Scrum team.

How to get started?

Asking (powerful) questions is a great way to get started. If you already use Sprint Goals, it’s probably a small step to identify a daily goal. The same questions we recommend to identify the Sprint Goal, remain useful for crafting a daily goal as well. Some questions we recommend teams to identify a Sprint Goal, but with a bit of tweaking also make sense for a daily goal are:

“If we were paying for this day with our own money, what work would give us the highest chance to get that money back?”

“When we achieve this daily goal, what has clearly changed or improved from the perspective of stakeholders?”

“If we didn’t have another day after this one, what would be the one thing we’d still have to do in order to deliver at least some value?”

“What worries about our product is keeping you up at night? What can we build or test today to make you sleep a bit better?”

“If we just canceled the remainder of this Sprint, what would be inevitably lost or become much harder later?”

“What would need to happen while working on this daily goal that would be cause for celebration?”

I’ve experienced that teams that struggle with defining a Sprint Goal, consider using an occasional daily goal as a learning path toward the Sprint Goal. Not every day resulted in a daily goal, but because they tried to work more goal-oriented as a team, they started to develop the habit of working as a team and thinking about the outcome, instead of output. Slowly, over time, they also learned how to not only use daily goals but also connect them to one Sprint Goal.

Learn more

If you want to learn more about Product- and Sprint Goals, check the following content and material we created:

• Blog post: “10 Powerful Questions To Create Better Sprint Goals”
• Do-it-yourself workshop: “Help Your Team Get Started With A Product Goal And Sprint Goals”
• Do-it-yourself workshop: “Formulate A Clear Sprint Goal During Sprint Planning”
• Do-it-yourself workshop: “Improve How Your Scrum Team Uses Sprint Goals”
• A card deck with 50 powerful questions, some of which are focused on defining a Sprint Goal.

Closing

In this blog post, I’ve shared an experiment that I’ve successfully used with several teams. In addition to a Sprint Goal, we would also define a daily goal. This wasn’t always easy, but it did give us flexibility and purpose in our daily work. Setting a daily goal improved collaboration, and gave us a laser focus, and commitment from the entire team. In hindsight, it also boosted team morale. Why don’t you give this experiment a try? It’s a small effort, but can have a big impact!