Want to Craft Great Software? Stand Up for Transparency

How Manuscript and Jell can help promote transparency and make your daily standups more effective.

Successful software development projects rely on transparency. It’s such a key part of the software development process, that it’s one of the 3 pillars of the Scrum methodology.

But whatever your team’s workflow, the efficacy of decisions made throughout the creation of software depends upon transparency in all aspects, from the goals of the project, to the resources required to deliver those goals, and progress throughout.

However, that’s all good in theory. But how do you deliver transparency in an ever changing environment, with a team of people all with differing agendas and motivations, and often times with an organization’s changing priorities and deadlines?

How Stand Ups Work

One way is with a Daily Standup. A brief, time-boxed event for the Development Team held at the same time each day. The Development Team discusses the work completed since the last stand up, what they aim to get done by the next one, and highlight any problems that stand in their way. This is typically done by each member providing short answers to the following questions:

• What did I do yesterday?
• What will I do today?
• Are there any impediments blocking me?

When done right they can improve communication, identify blockers to progress and encourage quick decisions to resolve them as well as improve each member’s understanding of the project.

How Stand Ups Go Wrong

But it’s important to do them well. They can break down when:

• Folks show up late, or skip the standup altogether
• Some people don’t say much or their updates are too vague
• Others talk too much, providing unnecessary detail or go off on tangents
• People aren’t prepared for the standup, they can’t remember what they worked on or what they planned to do
• Or the meeting doesn’t happen daily

So if you’re going to do them, you need to trust the process and follow it. A great way of building in that structure, in both remote and co-located teams, is with a tool like Jell. Jell is specifically designed to help development teams carry out more effective daily stand ups. And better yet, it integrates directly with Manuscript.

Daily Stand Ups with Jell and Manuscript

We stress the importance of using the right tools for the job. And when it comes to daily stands, Jell could be that tool for you. You can prompt people for updates at a specified time, by email or even within tools like Slack. People can see what it is they planned to get done, helping them stay on track. And by having them recorded in text form, it helps keep them brief and makes it easier to compare what was planned and what was achieved. Having it integrated with Manuscript is a bonus too, as links to cases give your team members all the context they need to understand the task, so everyone is on the same page.

Here’s how Jell works with Manuscript:

• After signing up, head to your organization settings and select Manuscript under connected apps.
• Then while making a standup update, you can add Manuscript cases. Out of the box, your team will be able to search Manuscript cases from within Jell itself. And you can even limit teams to specific Manuscript projects.
• Once a standup is complete, you can review what everyone’s working on in Jell.

Of course, you can’t just throw some software at it and expect to fix all problems. You still need to manage the updates by picking up on incomplete information, by paying attention to what is really being said (or not said!) and clarify differences between planned and actual results.

But, by running a Daily Standup with a tool like Jell with Manuscript you can help provide shared accountability toward achieving goals and promote self-organization among your team. Ultimately, this can help deliver transparency throughout the creation process of your software development projects.