After almost a decade of working on larger software development teams, one of the parts I (surprisingly) miss the most is the daily, early-morning standup meeting. Without a routine or direct teammates, it's easy to lose sight of that steady, healthy track of progress that makers should aspire to.
So, I'd like to try an experiment. Every morning around 9:30 I'll post the following prompt in #virtual-standup; anyone in the room is encouraged to check in.
Good morning, @channel -- let's have a quick standup.
- What did you get done yesterday?
- What are you working on today?
- (Optional) What's blocking you right now?
Note: This channel is just for standup reports. You're encouraged to chat with people doing interesting work, but please take that conversation to Direct Messages.
You don't need to go into detail explaining what your projects are or whom you're building them for, especially if that's either arcane or top secret -- this is primarily an exercise for the author. You also don't need to check in every day, but seriously, it's helpful. How?
- Clarity. When you're forced to break down your own work into a couple of sentences, you start to build the granular mental models to understand it better.
- Accountability. I know how hard it is to GSD when you're working without much oversight.
- Community. Rising tides lift all boats, right? Let's get inspired by what our neighbors are working on.