Agile Back To Basics: Daily Scrum and Stand-up

Standing Up?

Shu Ha Ri has become a common pattern transplanted from martial arts into the agile vocabulary.  The pattern describes the learning journey from student to master. Students follow their masters, and masters create new patterns of knowledge to teach students. A common issue I observe in many organizations and teams is that as a person, team, or organization matures their agile and lean practice they let the basics atrophy. It’s almost as if there is a gremlin that whispers in practitioners’ ears, “basics are for learners, you are a master.” This laxness is observed and emulated. The Daily Scrum or standup meeting is a case in point. 

 

Agile Techniques: Making The Daily Scrum Work

The Scrum Guide states the Daily Scrum is an event which the Development Team plans work for the next 24 hours.  Far too often teams are working on a mixture of items that are not related to each other or are assigned to team members which locks in boundaries between people.  The day-to-day microplanning envisioned by the authors of the Scrum Guide slip through the team’s fingers and land directly on sharing status especially when driven by the classic three questions:

 

Agile Techniques: When Daily Scrums Don’t Work

Sometimes doing what book says is out of the question!

When a Daily Scrum or daily stand-up are not used for micro-planning and collaborating to achieve the team’s goal, they are occurring for a reason.  Those meetings are scratching some other itch than planning, an itch that however unagile is often defended. When the goal of a daily meeting is something other than group planning there are more efficient and less expensive approaches even for highly agile teams to address status and have a social event.

 

Agile Techniques: Why Daily Stand-Ups Are Not Always The Right Answer

Every Day?

 

Daily Scrums or stand-ups are a fixture of teams, agile or not, whether they are fulfilling goal identified in the Scrum Guide or not. The Scrum Guide identifies the Daily Scrum (often colloquially known as a stand-up) as one the key events in Scrum.  The purpose of the event is to plan work for the next 24 hours. The meeting are short, approximately 15 minutes, therefore don’t feel like a huge investment of time and money. Wrong!  An agile coaching colleague, Anthony Mersino points out that the Daily Scrum has a cost.  His estimate of $60,000 – 110,000 annually for a typical Scrum team is probably conservative if you factor in the impact of gathering time and getting coffee afterward. Done well there is an offset to the cost.  The value of the meeting comes from micro-planning and collaboration that occurs during the stand-up. The issue is that Daily Scrums or stand-ups don’t always make sense, at least the daily part. Don’t spend the money for a daily stand-up meeting when:

 

Agile Techniques: Why Do We Keep Screwing Up Stand-Up Meetings

Not a status meeting!

The stand-up meeting is a simple meeting that Agile teams hold on a daily basis to plan and synchronize activities. The Scrum Guide states:

“The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team. The Daily Scrum is held every day of the Sprint. At it, the Development Team plans work for the next 24 hours.” 

Conceptually the daily stand-up is a simple event and when done correctly provides microplanning adjustments that keep a team on track. This simple meeting can be a great tool; however, it often becomes a HORROR story.  Nothing has changed since the last time we addressed the stand-up meeting in 2016. 

 

SPaMCAST 419 – Notes on Distributed Stand-ups, QA Corner, Configuration Management, Software Senesi

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The Software Process and Measurement Cast 419 features our essay on eight quick hints on dealing with stand-up meetings on distributed teams. Distributed Agile teams require a different level of care and feeding than a co-located team in order to ensure that they are as effective as possible. Remember an update on the old adage: distributed teams, you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.  

We also have a column from the Software Sensei, Kim Pries.  In this installment, Kim talks about the  Fullan Change Model. In the Fullan Change Model, all change stems from a moral purpose.  Reach out to Kim on LinkedIn.

Jon M Quigley brings the next installment of his Alpha and Omega of Product Development to the podcast.  In this installment, Jon begins a 3 part series on configuration management.  Configuration management might not be glamorous but it is hugely important to getting work done with quality.  One of the places you can find Jon is at Value Transformation LLC.

Anchoring the cast this week is Jeremy Berriault and his QA Corner.  Jeremy explored exploratory testing in this installment of the QA Corner.  Also, Jeremy has a new blog!  Check out the QA Corner!

 

Distributed Stand Up Meetings

Distributed Agile teams require a different level of care and feeding than a co-located team in order to ensure that they are as effective as possible. This is even truer for a team that is working through their forming-storming-norming process. Core to making Agile-as-framework work effectively are the concepts of team and communication. Daily stand-up meetings are one the most important communication tools used in Scrum or other Agile/Lean frameworks. Techniques that are effective for making daily stand-ups work for distributed teams include:

 

Stand-Up Meetings

Preparing for a Daily Stand Up

The daily stand-up meeting is the easiest Agile practice to adopt and the easiest to get wrong.  In order to get it right, we need to understand the basic process and the most common variants. These include interacting with task lists/boards and distributed team members. The basic process is blindingly simple.

• The team gathers on a daily basis.
• Each team member answers three basic questions:
  • What tasks did I complete since the last meeting;
  • What tasks do I intend to complete before the next meeting, and
  • What are the issues blocking my progress?
• The meeting ends, team members return to work OR discuss other items.

 

SPaMCAST 369 – The Stand-Up Meeting, #NoEstimates, More on Mastery

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The Software Process and Measurement Cast 369 features our essay on stand-up meetings.  Stand-up meetings are a combination of tactical planning on steroids and the perfect start to a great day. Stand-up meetings are one the easiest Agile practices to adopt and often one the easiest to mess up.

Also, this week features we have Kim Pries and his Software Sensei column.  Kim discusses what it takes to move toward mastery. Mastery implies more than just being good at any particular task. The Software Sensei provides a path forward.

Gene Hughson brings the first of his discussions on the topic of #NoEstimates from his Form Follows Function blog! Specifically Gene provided a more detail and background on his essay #NoEstimates – Questions, Answers, and Credibility.