Daily Standup
Definition
The daily standup, also known as the Daily Scrum in Scrum methodologies, is a short, daily meeting designed for agile teams.
What is it?
A quick (usually 15 minutes) meeting held every working day.
A core aspect of Agile project management, specifically Scrum.
Who's involved?
Primarily for the development team working on the project.
Facilitated by the Scrum Master, who keeps things on track.
The Product Owner may attend to stay informed but doesn't actively participate.
What's the purpose?
To keep everyone aligned on the project's progress.
To identify any roadblocks or dependencies that could slow things down.
To promote communication and collaboration within the team.
How does it work?
Teams often stand during the meeting to keep it brief. Each team member answers three key questions:
What did I accomplish yesterday?
What will I focus on today?
Are there any obstacles preventing my progress?
Benefits:
Improves transparency and keeps everyone informed.
Allows for early detection and resolution of problems.
Encourages team members to be accountable and self-organized.
Helps the team stay focused on achieving the current Sprint Goal (a short-term development objective).
In some cases, it doesn't work!
Almost all the companies I've worked with have daily standup meetings. But then one day, many people in your team suddenly expressed that they found daily standup too long and ineffective.
The issues raised:
A few members don't remember what they did yesterday.
When daily standup becomes a technical report, QA can barely understand the content.
People only focus on reporting to the meeting organizer instead of sharing with the rest of the team.
The team is too large, so even the fastest sharing takes more than 15 minutes.
My ideas and works until now
I completely understand the problems mentioned above. When team members feel that daily standup meetings are not beneficial, they become a waste of time and ineffective.
I investigated the issues and identified everyone's expectations in each case. The common theme was to focus on what is necessary for each specific event.
Currently, I have divided the standup meetings into the following categories:
Pre-Epic Deployment: During that week, I only ask team members to share what is happening in the Epic development process and focus on blockers.
Incident Handling: When an incident occurs for several consecutive days, it is important for everyone to know what other members are planning and what challenges they are facing to support each other.
Regular Days: I encourage team members to share more freely rather than report. It's okay if you forget what you did because it's not a KPI report. If you have a busy schedule for the day, you don't need to think too much by simply answering that you are attending many different meetings today.
After implementing this flexible approach to daily standup meetings for a while, I found that everyone agreed and the problems mentioned were solved. Additionally, this adjustment helped everyone understand what to prioritize at each specific time.