If you work using scrum methodology, you are used to these daily scrum meetings, also called stand-up meetings. My question for you is:
Are you and your team satisfied with them?
Let’s talk about it for a moment…
The first golden rule in stand-up meetings: it needs to be short. 15 minutes is the time we use as a reference. Keep it short and the best way to do it is not to make people too comfortable in the room, so forget those super comfy conference room chairs and never bring food to these meetings because we do this when we want people to stay longer, which is the opposite of what we want to achieve in stand-up meetings.
That’s why keeping participants standing is a good strategy. Not only they don’t become too comfortable, but it is also a great way to maximize interaction and eye contact.
Stand-up meetings expect all members of the team that have tasks assigned to them to speak. Keep in mind that not all participants are allowed to speak, but only those who have tasks assigned. And if you are a scrum master, it is your job to make this rule clear to everyone.
What happens if after the allotted time not everyone spoke?
Well, it’s your choice to extend theduration of the meeting or to stop it. My two cents for you: unless someone is just finishing a sentence or there is only one member of the team missing to speak, I would stop the meeting. Think about the lesson learned and how this will affect the next ones…
And what about those three famous questions:
- What did I do yesterday?
- What am I planning to do today?
- Do I have any impediments?
Well, it turns out that these popular questions are more a myth than anything else. Yes, they are very useful and represent a good reference that many agile teams adopt and you can absolutely use themin your scrum meetings, but you don’t need to.
Do whatever works for your team!
This is what the Scrum Guide 2020 tells us about these meetings:
“The Developers can select whatever structure and techniques they want, as long as their Daily Scrum focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal andproduces an actionable plan for the next day of work.”
Makes sense, eh?
Good luck and success in your agile projects!
