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Managed Chaos
Naresh Jain's Random Thoughts on Software Development and Adventure Sports
     
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Standup Meetings: Missing the Forest for a Tree

I’ve seen some teams getting so caught up in answering the 3 questions of the stand-up meetings, that they even forget the objective behind the standup meeting.

Following are NOT the goals of a standup meeting:

  • Get in-sync or to know who is doing what & where they stand. 
    • That information can be achieved through the story-wall (virtual story-wall if you are using a Agile PM tool). If you are a team of 3-4 people and sitting next to each other, you’ll anyway have this information (you better).  
  • To identify impediments. 
    • Why wait till the standup meeting to identify something is blocking you. If you can’t solve something yourself, bring it up to others notice immediately. Don’t sit on it.
  • Status report. 
    • This is the worst goal you can have for standup meetings. We are moving away from micro-management. 
  • Communication to the chickens. 
    • Again they can look at the project status on the story-wall. Or they can stop by in the team room and talk to someone informally. We don’t need to have a meeting for them.
  • And so on…

IMHO the real goals of a standup meeting is

  • To come up with a Game Plan till the next standup meeting. 
    • Its an opportunity to inspect and adapt 
    • Helps in doing micro-re-prioritization 
    • Helps in keeping everyone on the same page as far as the goals/vision is concerned

If answering the 3 questions helps towards this goal, then go ahead. But don’t think of them as an end in themselves.


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