Get the most out of your Daily Stand-up
According to the Scrum framework, only the development team participates in the Daily Scrum. Neither the Scrum Master nor the product owner takes part, but they are welcome to attend and listen, and in fact, the Scrum framework is explicit that the Scrum Master doesn’t even have to attend. They’re only accountable for ensuring that the team holds the Daily Scrum and keeps it within the prescribed timebox.
I think everyone with some agile experience knows what the purpose of the daily stand up meeting is and even how to run it, so I just want to share my experience about this practice and how the team can get most out for their daily stand up. I think that you as a part of the development team should decide on the format that makes the most sense for your situation, but I’d like to suggest the following practices to conduct effective meetings on a daily stand up.
Decide who should speak first
In daily stand-up meetings, the development team needs to know who will talk first. Although scrum master can decide who should start talking first, this idea is against the self-organisation characteristics of the development team. Without interference, the team should know who talks first.
There is some couple of ways for starting daily stand-up like:
1. Speaks first of the last arrival
2. Round Robin Method
3. Token Passing
4. Take a Card or Wood Stick
5. Walk the Board (up to down / down to up)
6. clockwise
7. anti-clockwise
However, all the above methods are a good solution to start daily stand-up meeting and each one has its pros and cons, as a Scrum Master and development team member I prefer the Speaks first of last arrival method because this is the easiest way that motivates and encouraging development team to attend to the meeting on time.
Have some fun
Did you ever think how important is keeping the team’s level of interest up by mixing a little fun into daily stand up meeting? It’s easy just try some of the following tips and then see the great positive effect of them.
1. Start stand-up by telling a short funny jock or story
2. Play a funny song on the beginning or end of a stand-up
3. Celebrate progress by recalling the importance of what the development team did.
As I have experience of working with distributed teams (in different countries) and running daily stand-up over GoToMeeting and Skype, I realise that playing a funny song at the beginning of the meeting is effective.
Just do Stand-up meeting
I know, sounds funny but just do your daily stand-up meeting STAND-UP not Sitting down (or any other formats). In the sitting down meeting, most likely, the development team use the time to report their activities and they change daily scrum meeting to the status meeting. Remember, daily stand-up is not status reporting meeting. Some may say it’s ok for the geographically distributed teams to run the daily (I prefer to call it virtual) meeting in sit-down format but believe me in sitting down meeting most likely development team take their mobile phone or even laptop and begin to divest from the meeting.
Also, standing up motivate everyone to keep the meeting in 15min time box and focus on what is important.
One for all and all for one
Its common team members are sometimes so focused on their turn to talk, they don’t listen to what their colleagues say. I call it “it’s not me” behaviour and it’s a poison for the development team. Great development teams trust each other and know accountability is for all, so if any team member faces an impediment rest of the team will try to solve it.
Speak loudly
Really?! I know, sounds funny but if you have an experience of working with the geographically distributed team(s) you know what I mean. Sometimes development team members are too shy or not comfortable to speak loudly which will impact attentiveness as well as the effectiveness of communication during stand-up meeting.
Please share your thoughts with me on this.
