I am not an agile evangelist. I am not a waterfall evangelist either. My favorite engineering processes are entirely driven by the need to successfully overcome product development painpoints and ensure that we build the best products possible with the least amount of friction for everyone.
I also do not believe in status reports for individual contributors. Line managers need to be very involved with their teams and know the details of what their teams are working on. They need to know the risks and help mitigate those risks. They need to be a buffer for the team to ensure that the team is able to deliver on their committments without interruptions from outside forces. This is why I love the daily standup.
Every day the engineering teams meet for 5 – 10 minutes and review the following information:
- What are they currently working on?
- What are the current challenges that they are working to overcome.
That’s it. I want to know if you’re on or off schedule and ensure that everyone is on the same page about what their teammates are working on.
I also use the standup to remind people of our goals. Everyone is busy, working on multiple projects, and it’s easy to forget the key priorities. I like to ensure that everyone is reminded of the priorities daily. Avoid surprises with constant communication.
What practices do you use to help kep your teams on the same page?
John
March 31, 2009 at 3:57 pm
The standup meeting is a great way to facilitate open communication. When kept to the point – priority tweaking, key status update, etc, these meetings are surely effective. But what if the length and scope of the meetings begins to creep? As nice as the daily standups are, what happens when you need information at other times during the day?
To suppliment the stand-up type meeting, we make use of IM and text messaging. As an organization dispersed geographically, it’s not always feasible to get everyone together, and it’s not always easiest to call. We collaborate using wiki’s as well. Blasts intended for everyone can be sent via email, but we try not to abuse that…
As functional as the meeting may be, flexibility is a must. Collaboration and communication must continue – even if it’s all reset at the next standup
March 31, 2009 at 12:44 pm
This is great if the teams are 5 – 10 people. But in my recent experience, it was 22. This meant 22 people standing for 30 minutes listening to information which rarely benefitted them. Which meant a lot of wasted time, and at $55 per hour on average, it meant roughly $600 each morning, or $12,000 a month….on status, so I appreciate you mentioning the “line manager” notion! Tools exist, such as Team Foundation Server, VersionOne, etc., where we can tie progress to requirements and get assessments. Or you can just give me that $12,000 a month and I’ll give you status like you wouldn’t believe! I also wrote a small program which puts that hourly rate for the meeting attendees on the screen and every second that passes, it increments the cost. Guaranteed, short meeting.
March 31, 2009 at 5:00 am
John,
I agree with your minimalist approach to standup meetings. As you noted on my post (http://blog.troytuttle.com/2009/03/jumping-agile-shark.html), it’s about simplifying team development.
My ideal standup meetings provide participants everything they need for the day, but nothing more.
March 31, 2009 at 3:37 am
I think something like that gives one about 99% of what you need in day-to-day management.
One thing extra I would throw in is, don’t treat your team like children, don’t patronize, and possibly, don’t even force them to “stand up” in the meeting. Y’all can sit in chairs just fine. Just try to keep the meeting as short as possible.
And the other thing I’d add is that one downside of a daily in-person standup is that it requires everybody to be in the office at same time, same place, every day. I believe it will become increasingly important (especially in retaining high-quality people) to de-couple time and geography from the work-life equation. So maybe expand the standup meeting notion to allow either in-person attendance OR tele-presence. And expand it further to say that if somebody can’t be present in either of those fashions, then just “touch base” with the team lead, somehow, when that person does have the time to do so.
And an even more ideal tactic is to have the smallest team possible, with the smallest number of stakeholders, so the need for communication is minimized, and the need for formality is minimized.
In the most extreme case, a one-person team doesn’t need to attend a meeting with himself. And can re-prioritize or change focus/plan/strategy in a matter of seconds. Saving much time, energy, electrons, dollars, etc. He/she may collaborate with others but the relationship is “horizontal” and mutual, not upward-facing and submissive.
Perhaps the future of software development is hyper-distributed (geo and chrono), and project status reporting will be done in 140-character-or-less tweets, web forums, email, and persisted group text/audio chats). Not only would nobody have to be standing up, they could even be lying down. On the beach. Naked. With iPhone in hand, madly thumb-typing away.
March 31, 2009 at 9:40 am
Great point, Mike, on the remote-office situation. During engineering standups at Swimfish my remote team in California also participates. While it is not as effective as in person the information flow still occurs.
The inclusion of the remote team is critical as I never want them to feel like an island separate from the team residing at our HQ. They are just as critical and this is one way to keep them constantly looped in.
John
March 30, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Hey John,
Thanks for the comment on CIO Rant. I posted a link back to your blog in my blogroll. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
-George
http://www.ciorant.com
March 30, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Hi,
You can’t imagine how important the word ‘stand-up’ is. Otherwise people remain sitting in front of their computer, their attention is split between the meeting and what they can see on their monitor.
Br,
Gabor
March 30, 2009 at 9:03 am
Hi,
we use the daily stand-up meeting in project with only maintenance to keep track of the issues we are working on. A stand-up meeting should be mandatory in all software projects, agile or not.
Regards
Johan