The longest stand-up
Working agile
Unilever defines agile working as ‘an approach to getting work done with maximum flexibility and minimum constraints. It goes beyond just flexible working or telecommuting and focuses on eliminating the barriers to getting work done efficiently.’. There are many more rituals and methods one could focus on describing modern ways of working, this blog post, however, focuses on the daily stand-up, as I recently witnessed how important it is to keep this update short.
Get up, stand-up
Stand-up meetings are a popular way to start the day for many product development teams. In recent years it has become a standardized way for a team to share what each member is working on. Usually, they take around 15 minutes and are held standing up (surprise!).
To keep the updates short, as they are intended, there are teams who are doing a planking exercise while doing the stand-up. If you are not fit, you witness how fast a stand-up can be.
The longest stand-up
I took part in a stand-up. 10 people. 1 hour. It felt it took ages. As a good facilitator, I kept to myself and took notes. Here are some things I want to share.
Patterns of daily stand-up meetings
The Product Owner/Scrum Master welcomes team and introduces the way of working, talk through timings, introduces the roles, i.e. note taker, timekeeper, etc.
With 10 people the stand-up should not be longer than 15 min, this is really a quick overview of what’s in play.
The following questions should support building the patterns for your daily stand-ups:
- Who attends?
- What do we talk about?
- What order do we talk in?
- Where and when?
- How do we keep the energy level up?
- How do we encourage autonomy?
Practicalities
- Be here now: if one member talks, everybody else listens, there should not be any side talk as this will make the stand-up longer
- Each member has only 2 minutes (maximum), in the beginning, you should time box it, after a while, you will get a feeling for this
- Super sticky post-its: working area, people walking by, you want the post-its to stick
- Sharpies, sharpies: same thickness so that the ticket look similar
When using post-its
- Write in capitals
- Have maximum 1 to 2 sentences on one post-it
- Nobody understands ‘efficiency’: different words can mean different things to different people
- Use different colored post-its or colored pens to indicate the state of work, additionally, you could use different color sticky dots, but I would use them for voting
- Limit the number of post-its in each section to 3 main ones
When talking through your tickets
Each member takes the post-it they talk about in their hand and moves it around the board (if required). If the post-it stays in the section, the member points to the post-it. The member clearly talks about the item, you don’t have to go into detail. Apply the following phrases to structure your meeting:
- This is what I did
- This is what I will do
- This is what I need
- These are potential blockers where I would need help
Tip: Members would make eye contact or points to the team member they would need help from, detailed discussion is to be made outside of the stand-up, so this is really just an acknowledgement for both parties to talk, the scrum master/lead/product owner takes notes of the blockers and requirements on post-its or on a spreadsheet.
Stand-ups are a mechanism to regularly synchronize so that teams
Share understanding of goals.
Even if we thought we understood each other at the start (which we probably didn’t), our understanding drifts, as does the context within which we’re operating. A “team” where each team member is working toward different goals tends to be ineffective.
Coordinate efforts.
If the work doesn’t need to be coordinated, you don’t need a team. Conversely, if you have a team, I assume the work requires coordination. Poor coordination amongst team members tends to lead to poor outcomes.
Share problems and improvements.
One of the primary benefits of a team versus working alone is that team members can help each other when someone encounters a problem or discovers a better way of doing something. A “team” where team members are not comfortable sharing problems and/or do not help each other tends to be ineffective.
Identify as a team.
It is very difficult to psychologically identify with a group if you don’t regularly engage with the group. You will not develop a strong sense of relatedness even if you believe them to be capable and pursuing the same goals.
The #changechronicles, a growing collection of written work from Roman Schoeneboom, covers but is not limited to #projectwork, #storiesofimpact, #sessioninsights, #training-by-doing, #opinionpiece, #teamsupport, and #changemanagement.
