Stand and Deliver

I’ve rarely participated in, or observed, a useful daily standup. Oh, wait, actually that would be never. And in those teams where we’ve not had daily stand-ups, we’ve never missed them.

Daily stand-ups are a signal –  a signal of latent dysfunctions in your development organisation. Of course, for many organisations coming from a highly dysfunctional environment, they can be a step forward. But like training wheels on a push-bike, daily stand-ups are a step we’d all like to be over with as soon as possible. Frankly, I think they’re unhelpful, time-wasting and what’s more, embarrassing.

The Daily Stand-up In Principle

A quick daily meeting to check the pulse of your project. Setting aside the raft of dysfunctions inherent is the idea of a project, let’s take a look at the origins of the idea:

“You want everyone to know what’s going on, even if they weren’t there when something interesting happened. You want to know who’s got a problem you can help with, you want to get help if you need it. You need a forum to announce interesting upcoming events.”

~ Stand Up Meeting, C3 Wiki

Every day at a specified time (C3′s is 10 AM), everyone on the team (developers, customers, people passing by) stands up in a circle. Go around the circle and briefly describe what you’re working on, how it’s going, anything interesting you have discovered, any problems you are having.

The Daily Stand-up In Practice

Here are some of the dysfunctions I have regularly observed in daily standup meetings, in practise:

• Substitutes for regular communication throughout each day.
• Poor understanding of context (the needs of the Folks That Matter).
• Poor appreciation of cadence (little urge to get things done).
• Lack of fellowship (bickering and name-calling).
• Lack of clarity on common (shared) purpose.
• Discomforted management (lack of visibility into the team’s progress).
• Disconnected Scrum Masters

Daily stand-ups are a signal of latent dysfunctions in your development organisation. Are you paying attention to the signal?

– Bob