The Stand-up is Dead. Long live the Stand-Up.
The traditional Scrum stand-up suggests that members go around a standing circle and answer the following questions:
- What did I complete yesterday?
- What am I working on today?
- Are there any blocks/impediments to what I am working on?
Answers give an snapshot pf what the developer as completed, what remains, and anything that stands in the way of progress towards meeting delivery goals.
A couple of side effects:
- An individual commits to work to be completed in an alotment of time
- Impediments can be shared amongs the group, other team members may have experience and/or solutions for impediments
- Team as a complete snapshop of where they are in the scrum
- Our teams are small and discrete, data, mobile and web, so 66% of the stand-up is an interruption for 33% of the members of the standup
- One good tangent can derail the standup for 5 minutes
- Our impediments rarely allow for, or result in, cross-team collaboration
- Team members know that their time is wasted
- The Standup acts as less of an information radiator and more of a "Start of the Work Day" mark for the team.
What I want to know from individuals, pairs or teams:
- Is there anything releasable and will provide immediate business value?
- Is the project on schedule?
- If not, why not?
If something is releasable and can add value, I would like it out in the wild. If the project is off schedule, immediately work to remove obstacles.
- First, kill the 10am morning standup.
- Product leads talk to developer/team leads, individually, Monday/Wednesday. Every other day will offer enough time to slip and catch up to work or to see if the project is really off track
- Product leads talk to developer manager as soon as project is off schedule