The standup that disrupts the workflow

Hans Bruins
Jul 27, 2017 · 5 min read

Stand up, stand up for your right

– Bob Marley

Scrum is a process framework for Agile development commonly used for completing complex projects. If you work with Scrum, you are probably familiar with the concept of the daily standup (sometimes called daily scrum). During these standups, the team meets to assess the progress of the sprint.

Generally, during a daily scrum meeting, each team member describes, what is done, what is planned, and if there are blocking issues called impediments.

In all the companies where I worked with Scrum, the daily standup was in the morning between 10 to 11. Which seemed to be the time when most people were generally available. However, is it really the best time for a standup meeting?

Let’s start: “What have I done since the last meeting?”

Ehm, that was yesterday, yes? It is now 10 o’clock, and I left the office at 17:00 yesterday. So, it was 18 hours ago that I closed my laptop and went home to my wife and kids. Yes, of course, I did some stuff till this morning, but I was just getting into the flow when this meeting interrupted me.

I always have a hard time to remember yesterday’s work. My solution to solve this problem is creating a list of things that I did yesterday, before the standup. It means adding 10 minutes of administration to the scrum process without developing.

Humans are mammals that live by the clock. And with that, I mean the biological clock. To cut a long story short, mornings are not the best time for the meetings. I have two main reasons for it. First of all, the brain’s peak, interestingly, is around 11–12 o’clock; so, the bonus tip is: lunch late, meet later and do the things that require the brain power in the late morning. Thus, morning is not only the worse time to have a standup, but also it is the waste of brain’s power.

Secondly, these meetings break the flow. By the flow, I mean the mental state that you require to start your work and things such as ideas, solutions, etc., gradually begin to flow. If this flow is broken, it costs you valuable time to get up and running again, if you can make it flow at all! There are a lot of things that break this flow or prevent you from getting into this routine. Generally, you can get easier into the flow in the mornings than later in the day.

Back in the days, when I was working with the Research and Development department of Baan (currently Infor) we had our standup meetings at 12:20 sharp. Why that time? Because our lunch was at 12;30, therefore everyone wanted to have a quick round. Everyone came out of their rooms, standing in the hallway and only mentioning the relevant things; things that could influence other’s work or certain problems that they had. After lunch you could come together to help and solve the problems. In fact, we even had two rounds; the first one was about specific project things. The next round was related to the more general issues. We did this with 15 to 20 people, way more than your average scrum team and yet, it worked!

Wait, you said back in the days, but surely Scrum didn’t exist then. Yes that’s right, but working like Scrum is nothing new in the companies that were serious about software development. We tried several ideas and approaches that were part of eXtreme Programming (XP).

In fact, if you look at eXtreme Programming you’ll recognize several methodologies used by the Agile framework and Scrum.

Everyone was also trained in the Personal Software Process, a very rigid development method to get statistical data about your software process as much as possible: people have been known for wearing stopwatches all the time. All this (historical) data was collected to create a more accurate planning (just like velocity).

In the end, we had created a pragmatic way of software development: not too much process with fixed rules but just enough to have a very Agile way of development, which worked perfectly. Other companies that I worked at after Baan were always a step back in time until quite recently.

So, when should you do the standup?

Setting it early in the morning solves the flow problem, but not the “what I did yesterday” problem. Setting it at the end of the day creates problems for those who like to start and leave early. According to the bio-clock rhythm and office policies, 15:00 would be the best time for a standup meeting of this kind.

Since the standup meeting is fixed, you can’t escape it but you do have the possibility to keep the communication as short as possible. So you could say something like: “I am working on the user story about implementing a BlueTooth connection; it goes according to the plan. I will do this until the next meeting and have no further issues”. That is 9 seconds flat (yes, I timed it). If you did have issues, just discuss them after the meeting like always.

Why should you explain what you have done, if that’s just what you were supposed to do? (“I am working on the Login screen!" "Yes, we know John, that’s the task we agreed you should pick up”).

So, a further optimisation could be that you only communicate when you really have something to communicate. Thus, you're not going around one-by-one telling the 3-point story, but you all agree on a default story and only mention deviations from this story.

That default story can be: "doing my appointed task, planning to do my next task, and I have no blocking issues". You just further explain the things that are not according to the default story.

Of course, there are drawbacks from this shortened version; the manager can't micromanage (he shouldn't anyway), the Scrum master is left with a 10-minute gap, and the team can't update the planning board (which is quite common but they aren't suppose to do anyway). Keep further in mind that this only works in a tight team that everyone works closely together and knows what the other members are doing anyway.

And the time? Well, the best time for the standup seems to be between 15:00 and 16:00. If this is not feasible, have the meeting just before lunch. It will stop your long-winded colleague (or scrum master), and you have something nice to look out for.

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