Daily stand-ups are for intra-team communications

01 December

I’ve been teaching a lot of Agile courses lately, and a very common point of discussion is the way the Daily Stand-up meeting is often abused and misused. Words like “micromanagement” are often used.

The primary purpose of the daily stand-up is for the team members to communicate with each other about their progress against the tasks they are working on. A coincidental benefit is that a leader or manager gets to hear about what’s going on. The meeting is for the team NOT for the manager!

The most common structure for the daily stand-up is the three questions from Scrum:
What have you done since the last meeting?
What will you do before the next meeting?
What is in your way?

Each member of the team should answer the questions in less than one minute. The answer should be against the tasks they have committed to, and the response should be short, sharp and to the point. The whole meeting should take no more than 15 minutes.

For example, let's say you are busy with a two-day task -

If everything’s on track, your response would be something like:
I started on task xyz,
I will continue with task xyz,
Nothing’s in my way

These responses let your teammates know that you are on track and they don’t need to be concerned about your progress.

On the other hand, if you’ve been pulled off the task to work on a production problem then your responses might be:
I started on task xyz and had to leave it to spend half of the day on the production problem, (your teammates now know that they have to adjust their work on any tasks which are dependent on you finishing yours)
I will need to continue working on the production problem – that will take me out all day (now your teammates know that they need to adapt to not just a half-day delay, but a day-and-a-half)
The production problem is in my way (this is something the manager/leader might be able to do something about)

Another common state is when you discover that the task is more complex than you thought:
I started on task xyz,
I will continue with task xyz,
I’m struggling with the task, I thought it would take me 2 days, but now that I’ve started it looks like I will need 4 days. (You might BRIEFLY describe what the issue is)

If someone else on the team could help you with the problem then they may say so, but you mustn’t solve the problem in the stand-up – talk about it together afterwards.

The key to an effective stand-up is keeping it short and focused, your teammates don’t want to hear the details of your day(“I spent three hours talking to Mary, wrote 500 lines of C code and spent 30 minutes in the bathroom”) they do need to hear about things that will impact their work and if you need their help.

A note for managers – the daily stand-up is NOT the dreaded “status meeting” – please don’t turn it into one. They waste the whole team’s time and don’t add any value to the team’s work. If you really need a status meeting, hold it every month or so, and trust your team to work in the organization’s, the project’s and the team’s best interest in the meantime.

What do you think – how do you make sure the daily stand-up achieves its positive purpose?

Here’s an example of how NOT to run a daily stand-up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLPIU60_NCM

 

Posted by Shane Hastie

Thank you!

Your details have been submitted and we will be in touch.

CHAT
CALL