The SKR World

A well run Daily Stand up meeting (alias are daily scrum, roll call and scrum huddle) can add significant value to the project. But what defines a good, well-run scrum meeting as the output of these meetings are intangible? The daily stand up meeting should be short, typically less than 15 minutes. But the facts should not be subdued to keep the meeting short. The purpose of the daily scrum is as follows:

• Sharing Commitment
• Communicating daily status, progress, and plans to the team and any observers
• Identifying obstacles so that the team can take steps to remove them.
• Setting the direction and the focus
• Building the team

The underlying theme of self-organization of team. The main purpose of stand-up meeting is to share the commitment towards their project and the team. This takes precedence over communicating status. The team leads, in general have a sense of progress. In the daily stand-up meeting the team member publicly shares his commitment. Identifying the problem so that the team takes steps to remove them is very important. Doing this helps the team to continue the momentum of progress. The meeting facilitates the setting of direction and focus of the team. Otherwise the team members may move in a different direction which might reduce the momentum of the overall progress. Finally but not the least, these meetings are medium to build team. These meetings build effective communication facilitator which is essential for building self-organized team.

An effective Stand-up meeting will energise the team for the days work, hence increasing productivity. At the same time, a low energy meeting can adversely affect the team’s productivity. The daily stand-up should help cultivate a sense of belonging to the team. The team members should sense his team is supportive and should be comfortable sharing the obstacle.

The Daily stand-up meeting should be attended by everyone who is directly/in-directly related to the project. This reduces the duplicate reporting effort. However, the people not directly linked with project might disrupt the meeting. In case a team member cant attend the meeting in person, he should find some way to attend the meeting by proxy (through the telephone, meeting summary sent by email etc.) The team members are not able to attend the meeting regularly, typically signals the meeting is not held at right place and/or right time.

The Daily Stand-up meeting should focus on the three questions:
1. What did I accomplish yesterday?
2. What will I do today?
3. What obstacles are impeding my progress?

Labels: Agile, Scrum, Team Building