Monday, May 3, 2010

To Squawk or not to Squawk

The daily standup meeting is one of the core concepts of Scrum. In the meeting the team members talk about just three things:

  • What I did yesterday
  • What am I doing today
  • What are my impediments

And that’s it…   However, the teams that I see can’t keep it that simple, there is always some banter ( a good sign of team happiness ) and extended discussion on what is going on that may derail the team or another team member.  If the discussion goes on for more than a few minutes we table the discussion for right after the standup.  While it’s important to keep the standup moving its more important not to squash communication.

Who should participate? Anyone who is involved or interested in the project.  Who should actually talk?  Only the folks directly involved in working on the backlog.  The other participants should keep their thoughts to themselves until they get a chance to talk to the Scrum Master away from the team. 

Now I’m going to break the rule, one last thing at the end of the standup I want to know if there are any announcements.  This is a time for individuals that are close to the project but not working on the Product backlog to give the team any information that is valuable for the team.  Usually I limit who can give announcements to a very few trusted individuals.

Daily Stand-ups.. keep them simple fast and open to the team.


Share/Save/Bookmark

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agreed! There is a sometimes difficult balance to be struck between allowing people to vent and moving things along. It's a boundary that I constantly struggle with at my current work as we have some coworkers who just can't stop themselves. So how do you keep progressing forward while still leaving everyone feeling taken care of?

Jon said...

Agreed! There is a sometimes difficult balance to be struck between allowing people to vent and moving things along. It's a boundary that I constantly struggle with at my current work as we have some coworkers who just can't stop themselves. So how do you keep progressing forward while still leaving everyone feeling taken care of?

Patrick Merg said...

Good question, discussion is good but the standup is really for the three questions. If you have some folks that can’t contain themselves, start the standup and reintroduce the purpose of the meeting. If they still want to talk ask them to table it to the end. I’ve heard of other scrum masters using an egg timer to give each team member 2 minutes to talk.
Let me know how it goes… Good luck

Manav Sharma said...

Superb description thanks for this valuable info. i will always come here to check information ..plz write for in future about web based softwares

business cycle said...

I agree that these daily meetings really help in not only making sure that everyone is on track with the project but also to make sure everyone is participating effectively, noone has nothing to do; keeps everyone busy..

Jack Clarkson said...

I definitely agree, these meeting keep everyone focused on what they need to do and get's them going in the morning.