I argued in my first post about stand-up meetings that the "right" participants were the key to the success of a meeting rather than whether the participants were standing up or sitting down. Despite my dislike for the stand-up component, I did mention in my first post that there are components of a "stand-up meeting" that I do like.

What components do I like? Why do I like them? How can we innovate?

Click here to read my first post on rethinking stand-up meetings.

Three components of a SCRUM stand-up meeting stand out for me:

1. Knowing the agenda
2. Limiting duration
3. Minimizing participants

Knowing the Agenda

A daily SCRUM stand-up has each team member answer the following three questions: 1) What did I accomplish yesterday? 2) What will I do today? and 3) What obstacles are impeding my progress?

All the participants know what is expected. I like this a lot. If the participants know what's expected of them, they are more likely to prepare.

I think there are opportunities to innovate on this solid agenda. Rather than verbally report status information, ask each participant to come to the meeting with their status written on sticky 3x5 cards. Ask them to create a separate card for each element of their answer to each of the three questions.

As you do the round robin, ask each person to read their cards and post them on a community white board. Using cards will cause the participants to prepare something before they arrive at the meeting. It will also increase the pace of the statusing. It will provide information for publication. It can be compared with 3x5 cards from the day before to detect problems.

I also think there is an opportunity to add a fourth agenda item -- What do I propose? The answer to this question notifies the team that a member wants the team to make a decision. As with the answers to the other questions, the team is notified but it doesn't discuss or decide during the daily stand-up. That's done at a separate meeting.

Limiting Duration

The objective for the duration of a daily stand-up meeting is 15 minutes or less.

I like short meetings. As a participant, I also like to have enough time to share my answers.

I suggest you divide 15 minutes or whatever you plan for the duration of your meeting by the number of participants Is that enough time a person to effectively status their work? For instance, if you have 10 participants, there is 1.5 minutes available for each participant. Is that enough time? That's one-half of a minute to answer each question, which would work for me.

I recommend that someone perform the role of time keeper. Alert each person, I like to use a chime, when they are 30 seconds from their time limit. And again when 10 seconds remain. Stop them and move to the next person when their time limit expires.

Please, don't stop someone in the middle of their report in the first few status meetings. At a point where the participants have had sufficient time to practice delivering status, it may be time to stop them. Without being at the meeting, I can't know whether that action is appropriate. But you can. 

Time in a meeting is like money in the economy. It's capital. Use it wisely and you will increase your return.

Minimizing Participants

A principle of a daily SCRUM stand-up is the separation of participants from observers. The less the number of meeting participants, the more time is available to each participant to share status information.

This is a smart action and I like it a lot.

If your hiring process isn't putting the right people in the meeting, minimizing participants will be less effective than it could be. 

For More Information

Jason Yip, It's Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings

You will find lots of information on the web about this topic. Use your faviorite search engine.

©2007 Steven M Smith

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