Why do we need standup meeting?

Tribute to Dov Tsal: I wrote this article in Thai, but he state the interest in having this in English. This motivate me to translate.

In Scrum, we have standup meetings.

Question is, why do we need to do that?

I found that in common perception, or any organisation that recently adopted Agile, they viewed this activity as status report meeting for manager or leader.

My next question will be, do we really need to know status of every people in the team, for each and every day?

In my point of view, I’m satisfied with knowing status in weekly basis. Also if I trust my team very well, I feel like I can go on with monthly basis.

Do we really need to know on daily basis? Why is that?

Let me put another example, many investors or shareholders of the company will revisit the status of company quarterly. I wonder why can they accept that? They invest a lot of money into the organization, how could they live with quarterly status report? while us need to know for status for each and everyday?

Why do we exactly needs to know status?

For me it is different.

I hold the standup meeting, because most of the time developers can stuck on some problem, and they will try to solve it my themselves. Maybe they see their teammates is busy, so they are hesitate to ask.

Again, most of the time, if they eventually ask, that problem could be simply solved by 10 minutes. Because teammate can look at the problem in very different perspective, and have different knowledge context.

I see that by holding standup meeting, it is the best time to share what are our blocker, so if there are 10-minutes solution exists, we can share

For me, the indicator of the team that have effective standup meeting is “no one get stuck more that a day, with the problem that teammate can solve in 10–20 minutes”

The status report, is only part of this goal. When we know status, what do our teammates is working on, what he want to do next. It give a chance for us to warn about something. Maybe there are some Gotchas in area that our teammate going to work on next. We can just warn him before hand.

But the real purpose is not to know the status. For me, I don’t even care to know status on daily basis. I can be satisfied with knowing status on weekly basis, if those projects/works does not have any yellow or red flags.

In the other hand, I cannot be satisfied with one of my team get stuck with some problem for days, that if he share and speak out it could have been solved by 10–15 minutes.

This is the main reason that I choose to have standup meeting

So when I join any standup meeting of any team, my focus is on the question “what is your blocker?”

I’m focus on this question, more than “what did you do yesterday” and “what do you going to do today”

So why do we have to ask “what did you do” and “what do you going to do today?”

For me, this question is just simply alignment check. If individual and team have go in different direction, working on different priority. We can provide feedback.

I did not ask this question just to “know” or “remember” what are my team is doing. I don’t see any point of knowing each and every step that they took in every day. That is just too much. Weekly basis or monthly basis is fine by me already.

But I care about making alignment between individual and team.

If I see that we are now on the same goal, hitting the appropriate priority, then that is all that I focus on standup meeting.

I can and may just forget what everyone is working on and status of everyone immediately after standup meeting end, that is just not on my focus at all.

Again, I don’t see any point of knowing status and progress of every people in my team in every day basis. For me, sharing status and progress is just serve the purpose of we can help each other fast enough, not the purpose of “I need to know the status and progress”.

At the start of the article, I asked about “Do we really needs to know the status in daily basis?”

This question is based on so many context. Let it be nature of works, office culture, trust between each other, etc.

So, while you reading, you may have different answer with me. It is perfectly fine if you say that in your context, knowing status on daily basis is a must.

The message that I want to send out here is, please recheck if we really need to know? What purpose do we have here? What are we going to do differently when we know status on daily basis, compare to not knowing?

Some people may answer this question with “Yes”, with valid reasons, and that is perfectly fine.

But based on my experience, there are too many people that just think “As a leader / manager, I need to know status of my team every day”

So I want to put the question here. Really? Why? What are you going to do differently based on this information?

So we can live with awareness, why does it being needed?

I think it is really better to live with awareness, rather than “I don’t know, this is just how we do things here”

At the end, I hold standup meeting because I don’t want anyone to stuck with any blocker and don’t have a chance to ask teammate.

So for me, standup meeting is just a safe zone that every one in the team can share their own problem without being judge, and we as a team make sure no one get stuck without any help.

That is my focus, when I do the standup meeting.