Stand-ups are part of the common lore in software development teams. I have personally been part of several of them and have always had a love-hate relationship with them.
Most stand-ups I have been a part of tend to eventually become bleak and almost a chore. I have seen teams getting crippled under the weight of them.
People forget a “stand-up” is short for a stand-up meeting. While a meeting tends to have discipline and careful scrutinization of its purpose, stand-ups seldom are given the same rigor.
This is what I have learnt when its comes to stand-ups:
- Don’t assume its format is set in stone. There is no set way of doing almost anything in life. Adapt quickly as your team dynamics change.
- Don’t make it the signal for start of the day for your team. It will lead to a lot of abuse and confusion. When not done right, bad stand-ups are an incredibly toxic way to start your day.
- Product Managers MUST attend stand-ups. There are no excuses here. Infact, they should run them. The right Product Managers take this stage as an opportunity to prevent tunnel vision in their team.
- Encourage everyone to say “Time out”, “Take this offline”. When done right, this helps keep the stand-up disciplined. Other benefits include slowly reducing the implicit power play that your team might have accrued.
- Actively discourage update like “meetings”. It doesn’t add anything to the conversation. It cultivates opaqueness.
- Kill it when its not working. Maintaining something which majority of the team is ambivalent on is rigidity.
- End it with everyone drinking a glass of water. I am not kidding. Even if I am, you are still better off by drinking that glass of water.
