Make daily stand-ups more Agile
Have you ever felt daily standup as,
- a waste of time
- not getting any insights on progress towards the goal
- status meeting where every team member updates what they are working on
then, there is a high chance that the organisation or the team assumed that a set of rituals can make them agile.
Note: This article is agnostic of agile methodologies. Terminologies are used interchangeably.
As described in the Scrum Guide,
” the purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work”
The daily standup is an opportunity to inspect and adapt the sprint backlog to meet the product goal. The 15-minute session should provide clarity to the entire team on
- how as a team are we progressing toward the sprint goal
- what should we do differently to achieve the sprint goal?
Stand-ups should be a collaborative session to discuss,
- the progress since the last standup
- the plan of action to meet the goal
- what are the blockers in achieving the goal?
- how can the team collaborate to overcome the blockers?
Agile principles relevant to standup
“Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.”
“Working software is the primary measure of progress.”
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”
- Working software will be ready as the team moves stories from in-progress to Done state. The common anti-pattern is to keep the team busy by pulling more work to an in-progress state rather focussing on getting the stories done and ready for shipment. The team should discuss maximising the output and keeping work in progress under control.
- Face-to-face conversation should be collaborative and knock out the blockers slowing or stopping the team from delivering software. The common anti-pattern is to run stand-up as a status meeting where each team member shares what they worked on rather than focus on the next steps to progress towards our goal and how other team members can help.
Walking the board
Walking the board is one way to effectively facilitate stand-ups.
As the name suggests, walk through the board - one story at a time. Start from the right and move left, and discuss each story.
The typical stages a story in the sprint goes through are To Do -> Dev -> Test -> Done. Start from the ‘Done’ and go left to the ‘To Do’ list
- Celebrate the stories completed that are ready for shipment.
- Discuss every story in progress (Dev, testing) to understand if the plan of action is set to meet the goal or if any collaborative effort is required to move the cards to the Done state.
- Review the To Do list for priorities.
Walk the board changes the perspective of stand-ups to be more output focussed, optimising the team effort to maximise the stories getting ready for shipment and keeping the work in progress under control.
There are other benefits to walking the board
- opportunity to review why the team has more work in progress to improve the delivery plan by identifying the dependencies early and sequencing the stories for delivery
- review the size of the sprint backlog that is achievable by the team
- improve the team morale by building potentially shippable product by the end of each sprint
- move forward as a team towards the goal
