NOTES ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Why Daily Standups Are Essential for Productive Teams
by Marianne Kay
| Daily standups happen at the same time every day and take no more than 10–15 minutes. |
A friend of mine recently asked me for advice on how she could help her startup emerge from a state of information overload. She said that the company vision was clear and that the staffers were well-respected thought leaders in their fields who were doing great work. Despite this, day-to-day interactions were messy, and important progress updates were hard to find. If anyone ever took time off, it was impossible to understand what happened during their absence without laborious, time-consuming scrolling of lengthy, badly managed team conversations in chat. Team meetings felt more like formal status updates delivered for the benefit of the CEO—and probably wouldn’t have happened at all had the CEO not attended them.
My recommendation was to introduce Agile methodology. Agile is a pragmatic approach that emphasizes communication over documentation and helps teams to become more mature and effective and ultimately self-managing. Agile is very popular in software development, but it is used in many other industries too. The company that my friend ran was well-suited for the introduction of Agile practices. Even holding daily standups—the most basic and foundational element of the Agile approach—promised tremendous benefits.
FORMAT AND AGENDA
Daily standups happen at the same time every day and take no more than 10–15 minutes. As with so many good habits, doing something a little and often works best. The purpose of standups is for the team to understand how it’s progressing toward its goals. It’s an opportunity to connect, ask for support, and see what other people on the team are currently working on. The most widely used standup agenda consists of three questions that each team member responds to:
- What did you accomplish yesterday?
- What will you work on today?
- Are there any issues blocking your progress?
This allows each member of the team to share what they’re working on and to ask for support with any issues they may have. An alternative standup format is to use a kanban board, which is a visual tool that helps the team to see how the work is progressing. The simplest kanban board displays three stages:
Instead of going around the group hearing each team member’s updates during daily standup meetings, the team goes through all of the tasks on the board that are currently marked as in progress. For each of these tasks, the person who’s working on it provides an update. This emphasizes the work being accomplished by the team over the individual performance of each member. At the end of the meeting, anyone who hasn’t had an opportunity to speak can provide an update even if there isn’t a task on the board representing their work. For example, a team member who attended a conference can tell the rest of the team what they learned at the event.
BEST PRACTICES AND COMMON CHALLENGES
Standups are often facilitated by a Scrum master (an Agile development role) who is basically the team coach. The Scrum master stimulates conversations, teases out potential issues, and monitors the time. Having a Scrum master keeps daily standups on track. This can work well for a newly formed team that’s still finding its feet. A more mature team should aim to run standups without relying on a single person to lead. Scrum masters can be chosen on a rotating basis, so that each team member gets a turn at facilitating a standup or a week of standups. Eventually, the team should be able to share responsibility organically, allowing the whole team to feel responsible for the outcomes. This way, everyone on the team is engaged.
Daily standups only last 10–15 minutes. For this short time to be spent well, the team must stay focused on the intended purpose of the meeting. Issues that need more than a few minutes to resolve must be tabled in the interest of time and addressed separately. One way to make sure that these issues are resolved quickly is to block out additional time in the schedule after the standup so that team members who need to discuss issues in more depth can do so in smaller groups. Some teams call this additional meeting a standup after-party.
Watch out for standups that turn into status update meetings. When each team member reports their own progress but doesn’t link it to the overarching team goal, the standup stops being useful. A set of individual progress updates shouldn’t require a meeting. This is particularly common when a manager is present. Mature, self-managing teams shouldn’t need a manager watching their every move; if this becomes a problem, the team should explore why the manager’s presence is required and suggest a timeline for how much longer the manager’s close involvement is needed.
CONCLUSION
Daily standups are the heartbeat of a team—they allow team members to connect, keep each other up-to-date with important developments, and resolve issues in a timely manner. Running effective standups helps to form good habits and is key to the success of the team. |
MARIANNE KAY (