Professional Daily gives your team a NUDGE
Would you brush your teeth every day if it took 10 minutes? How about 30? 40? Even if you brush, floss, and gargle your mouthwash in devotion and awe — I don’t believe you’d give it more than 10 minutes, let alone 40.
Daily Standup is a morning hygiene ceremony done in software development, just like brushing your teeth. We groom the communication of the team, and we do it together.
It conquered the world in a storm following the Agile craze back in the day and is now ubiquitous among developers, and yet — in the majority of places has simply gone so wrong…
How do I know?
The ultimate daily
I saw it happening. I was privileged to experience it firsthand in more than one place as a part of teams that deliver quality quickly.
Consider a daily of a group of 40 members that takes 7 minutes of everybody’s time without compromising any goals or leaving anybody behind. How come?
First — you hear a notification about some birthday and/or a logistic notice. Claps, frowns, whatever. It all dies to a serious silence.
Then, you get to business. You hear one sentence about a business goal, then 40 sentences about a value that is being worked on, of which 35 end with a notice of: “on target”, and 5 with some raised issues.
Last — 30 people leave ( — go to the desk, the kitchen, a smoke, the toilets, who cares, they are responsible people who manage themselves — ), and 10 stay to coordinate, knowing they will also disperse shortly.
I haven’t had such a good focusing daily for a long while now. I miss it a lot.
That’s what I would like to break down for you.
Why do a Daily?
The number one goal to which everything is a very distant second is:
Re-affirm we are On Target
Any risk to any of the commitments of the team must be detected and mitigated, first and foremost — the schedule.
Commitments may vary from a “sword over the head” in the form of a deadline, to a purely cultural thing. And none should be taken lightly.
Commitments are the core of your mission.
E.g.:
- Scheduled milestones — deliveries provided and/or tasks completed on a given schedule: a feature, a capability, a scope by milestone.
- SLA/SLO — services and communications: keeping a system up and available and/or handling any of its support tickets.
- Artifacts — deliverables derivatives of Deadlines and SLO: recurring business reports, a version with its docs, and change notes.
- Flag Raising —giving a watcher’s alarm, and continuous feedback: Raise a flag vigilantly over a watched KPI, escalate a situation before it’s too late, warn about a failure in the making, etc.
You want any risk to them cleared AT LEAST once a day.
For a start — this ceremony is meant to check that box.
Always Prepared
You want to re-affirm commitments even if they are just an arbitrary scope of some intermediary sprint, not only for a deadline promised to a stakeholder.
You want to be trained and exercised in detecting these risks and handling them in real-time. The best way to do that is — as a part of the routine.
There are more goals — like improving alignment, and keeping in sync, but none of which are half as important as the schedule and contract reaffirmation.
The Modern Daily
A good daily gives your team a nudge: A light touch: short, caring, stimulating.
(…as opposed to open-heart surgery in full anesthesia).
Also NUDGE — a useful acronym, of the 4 main steps:
- NU — Notifications & Updates
- D — Deadlines
- G — Group members' status
- E — Exceptions handling
Notifications and Updates
First — clear off administrations and logistics.
Infra updates, org changes, funerals, new team members, birthdays — you decide what to include, but do employ a bar of focus.
Some teams like to leave that to the end — but I personally find that troubling, because once everyone gave their line and gained their focus for the day, in their thoughts some are already on the keyboard. I want to let them stay there.
This part takes up to two minutes a day, but that’s an average.
Usually, there is nothing to inform. Then, just say: “no notifications today” and let them cheer… 🎉
Not skipping this checkpoint projects methodology and introduces fun. 😄
When there is — make sure you don’t only check the “I’ve said it” box, but convey the message: It might take some time for clarifications and acknowledgments —give it the space.
If you cannot fit something in — do not be tempted to “shove” it in.
Setting a separate meeting about it conveys how crucial the focus is to the daily. All you do in the daily is tell about that meeting that requires attendance and collect acknowledgments for that.
Deadlines
Having logistics out of the way, get to business.
This part is saying in a maximum of 3 sentences the topmost and nearest commitments.
This part takes 10 seconds.
️Seriously, how much time does it take to say up to 3 sentences?
Examples:
- “We are on the version for Wednesday with the new user-account functionality. Mind the new support ticket escalation we got”
- “We bash our open tickets below 10 by the end of the week”
- “We are working on the new staging env. that should be up next week.”
- “We are working on the runners of the new C.I. set up as a part of the preparations for the external security audit next month”
Each single point is an excellent example.
Two such points are …kind-of acceptable.
The whole list is a very bad example.
Scrum buds might recognize that as sprint goals — but the business does not depend on sprints (or scrum), and this step connects us to the business. When the business is willing to accept sprints — then great. If not — there hasn’t even have to be a sprint — There will still be business goals to align with.
Group members status
In this step each member gets two chances to speak: once in a rotation, and once by raised hand at the end.
Your goal in this stage is to detect issues, prioritize them, and free whoever you can, delaying only whoever you must.
What they say is exactly two things:
- what they work on — delivered value in terms fit for users to understand
No class names, no methods, no endpoints, no files:
Not a single detail that isn’t clear for AND owned by Everybody Present — including Stake-Holders and Guests!
This objective is hard and takes practice, but is very rewarding. A word on that later. - their status —
THIS IS AN OPTIONS LIST, NOT A FREE TEXT!!!
a) I'm on target
b) I'm behind schedule
c) I'm stuck — I need <resource>/<person>/help
When a person reports a problem (b or c) — the leader takes a note before moving to the next person and any discussion is stopped no matter what!
🚩Remember: Your goal now is to detect, not to solve (just yet).
After the rotation — ask if anybody has anything to add. Just in case somebody heard something that reminds them of something they missed or makes them need anything.
Keep laser-shooting — no discussions allowed (just yet).
This part takes on average 20 seconds per person. You’re a beginner team of 15? — this part takes 5 minutes (15s * 20 = 300s = 5min).
By now — you’ve spent ~7 minutes of all 15 people’s time.
At this point — people that are on target and are not named to be needed by anybody — are dismissed! 🎉
Exceptions handling
In this stage, often this space for touch base is enough for issues to resolve themselves through natural direct communication. Give people the stage.
But sometimes — issues will require an intervention of leadership: renegotiating scope, adjusting dependencies, redistributing workload, obtaining stakeholders' clarifications, etc.
If by now you’re left with more than one issue — decide in what order to handle them, and communicate that before diving into discussions. Don’t keep people waiting. That propagates respect for the value of people’s time.
If too many get to stay— identify who stays only for issues that can take a delay, all those — are dismissed! 🎉
The leader took a note, right? If she says it can take a delay — it can take a delay. It’s now her responsibility to manage that.
(on the utter worst case it will wait until the next Daily).
Now, that we freed the attention and time of whoever we could — then the discussions could start requiring only who’s time is necessary. But there’s one last thing you may consider as an alternative to keep people waiting— delegate.
Professional Leadership
Here the daily may be over for the bulk of the attendees, but for the leader — conducting the ceremony for 7 minutes is not the highlight, but the opening shot. Her work often has just begun. She ended with a list, remember?
What’s often forgotten is that beyond that list there are those who missed the daily, and efforts they are in charge of. So don’t be that leader.
Culture of Pro-activity
This mainly means that members get each other directly and proactively without waiting for the Daily so that in that meeting they have nothing to say above “I’m on target”.
But even communicative people sometimes get deep in their productivity zone and might snooze an important communication for that.
The daily should brush that out.
Last — if you see that communication between two certain individuals is often postponed to the Daily — you might want to check that up, just like detecting a sensitive zone in your mouth while flossing.
It may be just people being people, but it may also be you can lubricate things for the better. Take your call and do your leadership thing.
Culture of Accurate Communication
It takes practice before each member knows to say in one sentence what user-value he’s on in a language fit for users. Heck! It takes practice for leaders to get it right before they can help team members with that.
But I find it so helpful so that you actually hear what’s going on in terms of value — makes your time in the daily worthwhile even when you’re listening to other people — even when you don’t know the tech, the details, anything — it still makes everything more alive and connected to the purpose — to the why.
This makes dailies approachable for Stakeholders, making them more prone to be there for you in daily and provide answers on the spot.
What about the details?
Not a concern of the Daily. This belongs to other points in the workflow. You cannot go over the details and leave everybody focused refreshed and energized. It just does not work this way.
If you feel you need details in the Daily it’s likely you’re not doing the planning and/or grooming well, and I bet you also skip demos and/or retrospectives.
I also have to reject the claim that the amount of details is a cultural decision. IMHO — that’s what leads teams of 5 to spend 40 min in a Daily.
Esp. in the post-COVID world of VOIP & Cam, a long daily becomes some kind of a background podcast that most people do not really pay attention to while they wait to be dismissed.
And the 3 questions formula? It was a step on the way to getting small teams talking and started, setting for new leaders maximum chances to spot problems. However, it’s not DRY. The industry has evolved since then. Have you?
To sum up
A good daily will:
- re-affirm each time anew that the teams uphold their commitments.
- be an unanimous touch-base, a common heartbeat after which everybody is accessible for direct communication.
- leave everybody focused, refreshed, and energized for the day.
Guarding these 3 goals creates focus, alignment, and balance between the group and the individual.
Mixing in any above that is overloading on the daily concerns of other points in the workflow and compromises its core goals.
