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Why are Standup Meetings effective?

December 19, 2007 by sureshkrishna

"Standup Meetings" is one of the core practices in the Agile Software Development. Instead of meeting the team once in a week in a meeting room, daily 10 minute Standup Meetings are quite popular. Few teams - which do not have a clear idea of Scrum - consider these meetings as personally intrusive and intimidating. But what one can gain via Standup meetings are many fold then conventional meetings.

Well known reasons for effective standup meetings include...

  • As you standup for meeting, you tend to finish the meeting fast (no kidding)
  • This encourages courage among team members as they talk about the progress daily
  • Any issues would be raised and addressed on daily basis
  • As the entire project team is present, transparency is the key in communication
  • Chances of false promises by a member are less, as they are in front of the entire team

Once the whole team is punctual for the daily standup meetings and addresses the right issues, eventually this acts as a risk mitigation and preventive plan for the entire team. Its based on the simple principle that "The sooner we address the risks and problems, less are the project failure risks".

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Comments

Agree to your view on Stand up meeting but ...

December 23, 2007 by pkaarthikeyan, 2 years 7 weeks ago
Comment id: 1410

... there are many road blocks to keep the tradition of stand-up meeting.
I am working in an Agile Project which uses the SCRUM model.When the project was in the "Team Forming" stage we used to have stand-up meetings ,but slowly the ritual faced a 'Slow Death' , just because people from the Lead who used to conduct the stand up meeting to the people who attended the stand-up meeting thought it as a waste of time.

Is there any way to or steps to be taken to keep the tradition going on.

Here are few things which I observed that caused the hindrance in continuing the tradition of Stand-up meeitng :

1. The most important is , the people lack the PROCESS VIEW of the project , hence they tend to think the stand-up meetings as a waste of time.

2. The lead who conducted the Stand-up meeting had a tendency to drag the stand-up meeting for 1 hour , people who used to stand up briskly at the beginning of the stand-up meeting ended up in either leaning towards the wall or leaving the meeting by looking at the mobile phone as if they got an important call and never return.

Not a problem solving meeting

December 26, 2007 by Artem, 2 years 6 weeks ago
Comment id: 1422

It is somewhat dangerous to start trying any practice (not just standup meetings) without understanding the purpose. There are toomany ways for reading any practice. Standup meetings are standup exactly to force people NOT to make them an hour long.

I wonder what you talked about on the one hour long meetings. Standups are not the problem solving meetings, they are synchronization meetings desgined for letting people know who's working on what and what problems are on the way. What did you sycnhronize about for an hour a day?

Agree to your view on Stand up meeting but ...

January 3, 2008 by sureshkrishna, 2 years 5 weeks ago
Comment id: 1427

I did see the scenario you mentioned. It’s quite natural for anyone to think of a long 1 hour meeting -- that too daily -- as a waste. In my view I consider that the Scrum Master / Lead have to know what is right for the project and the team. For sure Standup Meetings are NOT for 1 hour. No way. If we do the recommended style of standup meetings, then I would say there is no way that this goes for 1 hour.
Of course the meeting should not be a problem resolution platform. If we stick to the following three questions, then we should be able to windup the meeting in 10-15 minutes of time with a team size of 10-15 members.

  • What did i do yesterday
  • What am i planning for today
  • Are there any problems to do my work

    • But the scenario you mentioned seems to be quite interesting. Can you please share experiences on what you did during the standup meeting?

    Actually ours is a very big

    January 4, 2008 by pinastro, 2 years 5 weeks ago
    Comment id: 1430

    Actually ours is a very big team of 50 people working on Re-Engineering ..arounf 20 working on new modules and 25 on the Legacy modules and 5 people working in the inteface modules.

    So the stand up meeting takes an hour ... Plus we have some other road blocks like we work on On-Shore , Offshore mode where unfortunately we have technical depth only at offshore...

    Also ...

    January 4, 2008 by pinastro, 2 years 5 weeks ago
    Comment id: 1431

    Another general problem we face is ..generally the New Module team does not understand what's happening in the legacy and vice versa.

    The only team that understands both is the Interface module.

    So, the Legacy waits without listening to the New Module and vice versa.

    We are now planning to have separate meeting in which the interface modules will be part of both.

    I don't know your details,

    January 5, 2008 by Artem, 2 years 5 weeks ago
    Comment id: 1435

    I don't know your details, but I guess there are probably some reasons why the new module, legacy and interface teams have to collaborate. If the reason is the need to implement features that go through new module, interface module and legacy module, did you think about working in feature oriented teams instead of module oriented teams? It might have limited the amount of people needed to implement the single feature from concept to delivery.

    When stand ups take too long

    July 23, 2008 by Quentin Montejo (not verified), 1 year 28 weeks ago
    Comment id: 1698

    then cut it up into neat little groups that has their work most related to each other :o

    if a person has to be involved in everything well ... he could attend each if he can. otherwise, you've got a person doing too many things ;)

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