During a particularly chaotic Sprint, a company executive tells the Scrum Master, 'just run the Daily Scrum yourself and tell the Developers what to report, since you're the one accountable for the team.' What is the most accurate response to this framing?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
The Daily Scrum belongs to the Developers — it's their fifteen minutes to inspect their own progress and replan, not a status meeting someone else runs for them. A Scrum Master's job is making sure that conversation happens well within its timebox, not standing up front and telling people what to say.
Full Explanation
The 2020 Scrum Guide states the Developers are accountable for conducting the Daily Scrum; the Scrum Master ensures the event takes place, stays within its timebox, and teaches the Scrum Team to keep it a productive inspect-and-adapt conversation rather than a status report to someone else. The executive's framing — that overall Scrum Master accountability for the team justifies personally running and scripting the event — conflates 'accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness as a coach' with 'directing the Developers' internal event,' which is a different thing the Guide does not grant. Redirecting the report to the executive instead of the Product Owner doesn't fix the underlying problem; the Daily Scrum was never meant to be a report delivered upward to anyone, executive or Product Owner. Handing the event to the Product Owner is also wrong, since the Product Owner has no more claim on running it than the Scrum Master does — it stays with the Developers regardless of who is asking. The healthy pattern is the Scrum Master protecting the event's purpose and timebox while staying out of dictating its content. A quick check: if the Daily Scrum sounds like people reporting to a person rather than talking to each other, its purpose has already been lost.