Daily Stand-Up Meetings

Daily Stand-up – 10 Rules to Inspect and Adapt!

Projects get to be late one day at a time, so it seems logical to have a daily team meeting to ensure you are all on track, to find out any issues that may prevent you from hitting the dates, and to ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction. It is therefore, arguably, the most important meeting a SCRUM team can have, and bizarrely it seems to be one of the least understood. Am I allowed to do this or that are common questions! So here is a ‘starter for 10’ for the team to inspect and adapt as they see fit!

1. Start as early as possible, on time without waiting for people – sets the agenda for the day.
2. Time-box the duration of the meeting to 15 minutes- use a time-out buzzer if needs be.
3. Stand-up - this encourages brevity amongst the participants and keeps them awake
4. Location – same place and time each day – publicised - preferably the team room.
5. Stand in a u-shape next to the task board to provide speaker context.
6. Flip a coin for asking status – heads go clockwise around the team, tails go anti-clockwise!
7. Only Team members and the Scrum Master are allowed to talk
8. Do not ask the ‘three questions’ – simply get into the routine of answering them.
9. Do not solve problems raised during the meeting – do them after the meeting
10. Note down impediments on the task board that the ScrumMaster will own and resolve

Etiquette

Firstly, the team are all adult professionals so I would expect each team member to come fully prepared to answer the three common questions which are

• What have you done since the last meeting? - Team members explain if they have met their commitments from yesterday
• What will you do today? - Team members commit to each other what they will achieve today
•  What are your impediments? -  Scrum Master writes them down for later resolution (aka ASAP)

In addition, mobile phones etc should be turned off.

Once the meeting is over, team members visit the task board and update their remaining effort on the story cards. The Scrum master collates and updated the sprint burn-down chart, and eventually the release burn-down chart. The team members then discuss any items that arose during the meeting that require further clarification and resolution. Its as simple as that!