Stand-Ups are common with all agile method-sets. This is mostly due the need of communication within and throughout the team because evidence showed that this kind of talk is not happening by accidence. People are on the one side afraid to tell that they have problems with a task and tend to invest a lot of time to solve it by their own although other team members would be able to help them fast and easy. On the other side talking about what they did and what they plan helps them and the team to know how much work they can do in a period. Because there is no official standard on agile methods Daily Stand Ups differ in some respects but there are enough widely agreed principles how to do them. First of all, people are like the name tells, standing. This is to avoid people relaxing in chairs and loose energy through-out the session, to keep them active so to speak. Time plays also a very important part. A typical frame is 15 minutes on a team-level. This creates the urgency to speak short and clear and hinders discussions. If there is a need for a longer talk on a topic, it can be done afterwards. Stand Ups are there to help discovering such topics but not to clear them. Also do all Stand Ups begin on time there is no need in waiting for some on. The agenda for everyone in a Stand Up stays always the same and consist mostly on the following 3 Questions. What have I achieved since the last Stand-Up? What I am planning to do in the next period? Are there problems or lacks that are hindering me?
Agreed deviations
There are some deviations in how to do Daily Stand Ups. Some teams prefer burn-down charts as meeting-point, others use their Kanban-Board. This last one is called walking the board and means to go through all the tasks from back to front. This has several positive impacts. Going from the back means talking first about the tasks that will be finished at first and therefor have the highest value to the project. It also means that everybody pays more attention because the tasks are chosen by the Scum Master and people are not all the time just preparing for their 3 Questions: Yesterday, Today, Problems instead of listing to the others. Some also use the meeting to move their cards in front of the team to get and create a positive emotion for finishing a task. For punctuality some teams agree on some kind of “punishment” for being late. Paying into a money-box for example or bringing cookies for all the others.
Gains
By institutionalizing task-communication several positive effects are created:
Hindering parallel work or redundancies
Increase team-dynamics by having everyone speaking
Transparency about what all the team-members are working on and bring them all on the same-page.
By speaking out what you are planning to deliver, the members have a bigger motivation to do so.
Mistakes in Stand Ups
There are also some common mistakes people are making when doing Stand Ups. Often these lead to the feeling Stand Ups are not efficient, do not work or a waste of time.
Most of them occur when the above described principles are ignored like don’t start on time, don’t finish on time, let discussions arise, mixing up the task-meeting with socializing.
Attendees
Typically, the following roles attend the daily stand up: Scrum Master, Team members, Product Owner and Stakeholder. The Scrum Master has the role of a moderator he watches out that everyone speaks, all keep the time limits and documents the problems to solve them afterwards. The team members have to participate obligatory, if they can’t they have to have a substitute. Product Owners do not have to attend, but it would be helpful to know the team’s obstacles because he is the one speaking to stakeholders and writing the user stories. Product Owners and Stakeholders do not have the right to speak in daily stand ups.
Sources
Taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316qdj10j9M
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