You can find literally hundreds of blog posts and articles on the Daily Standup, a.k.a. Daily Scrum. But there is little written about what often comes, or at least should come, after, the Daily Standup.
What, you may ask should come after the Daily Standup? Well, the Almost Daily Sit-Downs of course! By the way, if you haven't heard the term before, I just coined it.
The Daily Standup
Before we go into the Almost Daily Sit-Downs, let’s look briefly at the Daily Standup. The Daily Standup is held each working day (with few exceptions) and is attended by the core team (the Pigs in Scrum parlance) and potentially others. The goal is to finish the meeting in 15 minutes, so only the core team members are allowed to speak, and each person has approximately 1 to 2 minutes (assuming < 10 people) to answer:
- What I did yesterday (since the last Daily Standup)?
- What I will do today (before the next Daily Standup)?
- What blockers are in the way?
These questions are deceptively simple, but many are confused about how much detail to give in
response. As a result, Daily Standups often end up taking much more than the allotted 15 minutes. When this happens, I recommend one word to guide individuals and teams as they answer the three questions; “coordination”.
If you focus on giving just the information required to coordinate effectively, the meeting will be more effective. The information passed along will help the team make commitments to each other, and self manage, but you will invariably have to leave some things out. For example, perhaps you would like to talk about something you learned.
You could say this...
“Yesterday I found out something incredibly interesting and valuable about transforming the new XML file that we receive, if you want to, blah, blah, blah.”
But, it would be better to say...
“Yesterday I found some valuable information about how to transform the new XML file that we receive. I believe that Venkat, Ellie and Carly will benefit, so we can have a sit down after this meeting to discuss, and anyone else who wants to learn more can also come.”
Or maybe when you are talking about what you are going to do today, you want to go into detail, so that the team can give you input.
You could say this...
“Today I am going to work on the new database cache approach to speed up data access. I am going to create a set of new tables on the application server. As each new request comes in, blah, blah, blah."
But it would be better to say...
“Today I will work on the new database cache approach to speed up data access. This will rely on storing frequently accessed data on the application server, and I can use help on the design. Can anyone sit down with me after this meeting to help me think this through?”
Defer the Details and Problem Solving to the Almost Daily Sit-Downs
Depending on the particular day, it is possible that the team will need several sit down meetings, and on other days, none will be required. The key is that you hold a sit down meeting only when required (hence the "Almost Daily" part of the name).
Using the Almost Daily Sit-Downs for the detailed discussion and problem solving allows a team to focus the Daily Standup on coordination, so that team members can answer the three-questions in a rapid fashion, making the Daily Standup a concise and effective coordination mechanism.
Your Experience
We are always interested in your experience, so please respond with your thoughts about how your team operates today?
- Does your team have Almost Daily Sit-Downs?
- Does your team focus their discussion at the Daily Standup on coordination?
- If your team doesn’t have effective Daily Standups, can they improve by focusing on coordination and deferring the details until the Almost Daily Sit-Downs?
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11 comments:
This is an interesting post.
I guess most everyone has the sit down meetings on an almost daily basis, but I think your are right that giving these meetings a specific name will help us focus on the three questions.
We do something similar.
After the Daily Standup, the team break out into "Huddles" where items like those you mentioned are discussed in more detail. Depending who has an interest/impact would attend the Huddle.
We do something similar.
After the Daily Standup, the team break out into "Huddles" where items like those you mentioned are discussed in more detail. Depending who has an interest/impact would attend the Huddle.
We called them huddles as well. For example, we might mention some roadblocks for an upcoming release in the standup and afterward discuss our ability to make that date as a team.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/pshayes
We also do something similar but we still frequently end up trying to solve problems in the Daily Standup, and as a result we often spend an hour or more.
I am hoping to pass this blog around to convince everyone to focus on coordination issues and defer the problem solving for a sit-down.
I love the terminology! I find that teams constantly regress to detailed discussions on their feet, and though we take turns suggesting we take it off-line, we're not always disciplined enough to say who will sit and when.
Per the comments on the blog, and additional comments I received offline, most teams have Sit Down discussions after the Daily Stand Up, but in many cases it is not clear what to discuss in the Stand Up, versus the Sit Down.
I believe that giving the follow up meeting a formal name, and clarifying it's intent, leads to more productive Stand Up Meetings.
Perhaps an even more appropriate name could be "Detailed Sit-Down" to delineate it's purpose as the forum to review details, solve problems and pass along detailed knowledge, reserving the Daily Stand Up for co-ordination.
Once again, I am interested in your thoughts
Its easy for a peer to say "Let's take it off line" when they aren't interested in more than a snippet of what their co-worker is reporting. But what about when its the Team Lead/Manager that starts to ramble. I've seen a brave soul or two suggest "maybe we can discuss that after..." What happens when the 'authority figure' retorts with "But this is really important..." Maybe 'task cards' should be handed out at the standup to be brought back and 'owned' at the pairing stations instead of left on 'the board'... Once the task card is in your hand, the discussion is over...
David's observation to focus on coordination is critically important to project speed, and provides a too often overlooked means for focusing the standup.
Very insightful and useful.
If the team doesn’t get a solution or is stuck in arguing about the right way to solve a problem a lie down can help. The team is lying in a circle, heads together, staring on the ceiling and being quite for 1 minute before. Then the team starts talking again while continue lying and staring.
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