If an Agile team has members, such as developers, from different geographical regions, how can the daily scrum meeting happen? Obviously, they have to work in different time zones.
Do you think the daily scrum meeting can be replaced by sending status emails at the end of day? Is that even called Agile or we are inventing new Agile?
No. The daily scrum is not a status report, but a short conversation between team members that coordinates activities for the day. It cannot be replaced by an email status report, since that's a completely different thing.
Is this the best process, given all the known alternatives, that supports your team in generating the best software it can (by whatever definition of Best your team is using)?
If it is then, yes, you are being Agile. You are redefining your processes to adapt to changing situations and finding the best outcome you can.
If instead this is a fallback, plan B or a half-hearted whatever, then this is only Agile in so far as you are attempting to improve upon it.
Otherwise No, this isn't Agile. Adopting a practice that actively undermines the team, or diverts them into useless bureaucracy is dogmatic and the antithesis of Agile.
No, its not part of the Scrum framework.
There are different things at play here.
First, Scrum is not the same as SAFe and neither are the same as Agile. Agile Software Development is a set of values and principles. Scrum is a lightweight process framework that is defined in the Scrum Guide and contains a number of roles, events, and artifacts. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is an enterprise-level framework that may or may not be helpful in helping an enterprise embrace agility.
What this means is that a practice that helps promote agility may or may not be in line with the rules of Scrum or SAFe.
Is sending a status email at the end of the day agile? I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe not. One of the principles of Agile Software Development is that "the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation". If there's no face-to-face (or, in today's world, 20 years after the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was written, high fidelity voice and video communication), I'm not sure you can be Agile. However, there's insufficient information to outright say that you aren't Agile.
Is sending a status email at the end of the day consistent with Scrum? Absolutely not. Scrum is defined in the Scrum Guide and is immutable. That means if you are not following the rules that are specified, you may be doing something that works for you, but the result is not Scrum. One of the key Scrum events is a daily planning and coordination meeting called the Daily Scrum. If the Development Team does not get together for up to 15 minutes for the purposes of planning their day, it's not Scrum.
Is sending a status email once a day consistent with SAFe? Again, I'd say no. At the team level, SAFe calls for the Daily Stand-Up (DSU). It's a gathering of the full team at the same time and the same place every day. Since you're not doing that, I'd be hesitant to call what you're doing SAFe.
If your team is so distributed, I'd question how effective they are as a team. They may be more like individuals working on a common project. In such a case, perhaps Scrum and SAFe aren't appropriate for your needs. Most frameworks are built around either co-located teams or at least teams that have not-insignificant overlap in their working hours to support frequent, real-time communication.
Agile has nothing to do with daily scrum meetings. Agile is about valuing individuals and interactions more than processes and tools. And it's about adapting to change: geographically dispersed teams interact differently than collocated teams.
Daily scrums is a synchronisation event that aims to facilitate interactions, by sharing expectations about the next 24 hours. But this only makes sense if there's a shared understanding of where the team is compared to what was expected the day before.
The key of the daily scrum is team interaction. Same time doesn't have to be same local time. Same place can be cyberspace, as covid19 proved it. Exchange per video, phone, or even chat is not as great as in-person, but is ok. But a simple status email about the past, doesn't provide for constructive exchanges about the very near future. Anyway, at least a feedback loop is missing.
Interactions rather than monologues make it hapen: Alone, you may go faster, but together you will go farther.
