Team Sync

The Morning Question, What Good shall I do this Day? Evening Question, What Good have I done to day?

—The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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What is the Team Sync?

The Team Sync is a quick event (usually 15 minutes or less), typically held daily, to inspect progress toward the iteration goal, communicate, and adjust upcoming planned work. The team can use any structure or technique for the Team Sync to create an action plan for the next workday. Though the Team Sync is not the only time team members can make adjustments, it is a dedicated time. The team should also collaborate and discuss adapting or re-planning work when needed throughout the day. The discussion in the Team Sync should maintain a forward focus on adapting the plan for the immediate future. It does not serve as a status report of completed work. This daily coordination helps the team maintain a shared understanding of dependencies. Together, they develop a plan to use the workday’s capacity effectively, supporting progress toward the iteration goals.

High-performing teams use the Team Sync to identify opportunities to help one another succeed in delivering their committed iteration goals. The Scrum Master/Team Coach writes down topics that need further discussion on a ‘meet after’ board. Only the involved parties stay during the meet after to discuss these topics in more detail. Ineffective Team Syncs may be a symptom of deeper problems that require a systemic approach for resolution, which often becomes the responsibility of the Scrum Master/Team Coach.

What is the purpose of the Team Sync?

The purpose of the Team Sync for the business is to ensure each Agile Team meets its iteration goals, enabling the ART to achieve its PI Objectives. For the Agile Team, the purpose is to maintain alignment, adapt plans as needed, and proactively resolve impediments to ensure a consistent flow of value and reliably meet iteration goals.

How does the Team Sync connect with the SAFe Principles?

SAFe Principle #1: Take an economic view – Agile Teams should focus on the most valuable work to do next, ignoring sunk costs. This daily focus ensures plans are updated to reflect new realities. This is crucial when early work creates new insights or when the nature of the work is emergent.
SAFe Principle #3: Assume variability; preserve options – The Agile Team should adjust the stories brought into the iteration during Iteration Planning, if necessary, to achieve the iteration goals. The commitment is to the Iteration Goals, not the stories, allowing the underlying plan to evolve during the Iteration.

What is the outcome of the Team Sync?

The Agile Team achieves immediate alignment, resulting in a collaboratively defined tactical plan for the coming day. They have clear mutual accountability for the upcoming work and an explicit agreement on the immediate next steps for all identified impediments.

What are the inputs and outputs?

Inputs to the Team Sync include:

• Iteration Goals: An iteration goal is a high-level summary of the business and technical goal that an Agile Team agrees to accomplish in an iteration. The iteration goals, created and committed to by the Agile Team in Iteration Planning, focus the team on what it is trying to achieve.
• Current iteration: The Agile Team should maintain a shared tool or method for stories and iteration goals. Each Agile Team member should be prepared to discuss any discoveries or risks that have emerged, which could affect the remainder of the iteration.

A successful Team Sync event delivers the following outputs:

• Action Plan for Impediments: A list of identified impediments with a clear owner and next step. Next steps are generally to resolve locally or escalate to ART Sync.
• Aligned Iteration Goals Status: A clear indicator of progress toward the Iteration Goals, used to align across the Agile Team and across the ART. 

How does the Agile Team prepare for the Team Sync?

The Team Sync should require minimal preparation.

• Team Members can verbally communicate what they have done since the last Team Sync and any impediments they are facing.
• The Scrum Master/Team Coach has made the iteration goals visible, reminding the team what to focus on.

How to run the Team Sync?

The Scrum Master/Team Coach sets the daily cadence and organizes the space, ensuring the team’s iteration goals are visible to maintain focus on the desired outcome. They facilitate the timeboxed 15-minute event, typically using a question format (see example below), while strictly emphasizing forward-looking coordination and adaptation of the plan over passive status reporting. They ensure the team collaboratively adjusts its plan for the day and proactively captures any identified impediments. They identify topics for immediate follow-up in a “meet after” and escalate blockers beyond the team’s ability to solve locally.

Most teams follow a simple round-robin format where each member addresses three specific points (Figure 1):

• What did I do yesterday? Focuses on conversations, decisions, or progress made since the last sync towards the iterative goals, particularly those that will influence what the team intends to do in the immediate future.
• What will I do today? Outlines the immediate plan of action to ensure the team knows who is working on what and how best to support one another.
• Are there any blockers? Identifies impediments (technical debt, missing info, or dependencies on other teams) that are preventing progress.

Before the event concludes, the team should understand how they will collaborate to achieve the iteration goals and how they will handle any impediments raised.

While there is no universally correct way to address impediments, the resolution will often be one of the following broad categories:

Escalating to ART Sync: The impediment is beyond the Agile Team’s ability to resolve locally and requires assistance from the Agile Release Train. The impediment can be escalated to an ART Sync event, typically by the Product Owner or the Scrum Master/Team Coach.

Discussing in a meet-after: The Team Sync is intended to be complete within 15 minutes. However, teams often schedule a 30-minute timebox so they have additional time to resolve impediments. This extra time is called a meet-after. Anyone in the team who is not required to resolve the impediment does not need to stay for the meet-after.

Schedule time later: Impediments that cannot be resolved quickly in a meet-after may require proper time set aside for dealing with them.  The Scrum Master/Team Coach may also facilitate resolutions asynchronously throughout the day and share them with the team as things progress.

Who attends the Team Sync?

Attendees of the Team Sync event include:

• The Product Owner (PO)
• The Scrum Master/Team Coach
• All additional Agile Team members
• Any subject matter experts, if needed, for an effective alignment that day