Daily Stand-Up - Not Just a Ritual

Here is a brief write-up about Daily Stand-up ritual of 'Being Agile' journey. 

Motive is to give quick overview about this ceremony, sharing some of the learning. For detail reading, I would recommend the link given at the end of this article.  

What is the purpose of daily stand-up:

• Shared understanding of goals and current status 
• Plan your day (self-management)
• Coordinate efforts, ask for help, offer help
• Ensure team communication
• Identify as a Team

What are daily stand-up basics, and these are designed for important purpose (refer to links given at the end):

• Fix time
• Fix place
• Must not be more than 15 min
• Whole team gather themselves
• Everyone derive her/his status following three scrum magical questions. Important: It is all about sharing plan, not the task names. Focus should be, what I am doing to contribute to delivery.
• Breakout session at the end or later, if anyone need to discuss more
• Share plan which makes sense to team in bigger context for delivery, It is not about status sharing.
• Only PIGs are allowed to speak. Chickens can join as listener although (refer to scrum pig/chicken story please)

NOT to do:

• Not being regular
• Coming without preparation
• Story telling 
• Problem solving
• Using it as reporting or tracking meeting, 
• Reporting to a Leader or to SM or to Manager. It is all about team communication.
• Work assignment - Mostly, it is done during sprint plan and weekly scrum. There could be few exceptions like helping anyone or any critical work, which team can take call.
• Running across locations (Soln: break in co-located teams. Share the brief in Teams space – only if day to day work is too interdependent - which is neither ideal, nor productive)

General Guidelines:

• Please ensure presence during daily stand-up. This is very important. 
• Start gathering at scrum board yourself at decided time, instead of waiting for someone to call.
• Groom habit to share your updates and plan yourselves, without a need of someone putting efforts to move the baton. It is your time to share, coordinate and plan the day.

Recommended Flow:

• Team gathers at decided time
• One person (can do in sequence of who came last :) )  start sharing his/her status and plan using 3 questions, along with moving or adding new tickets on scrum board. Ex: 
  • Team member A: I completed the validator implementation yesterday and pushed the code. I picked transformer feature, but could not complete as I am not clear about some design aspects. I shall continue with transformer implementation today, if someone can help me to solve design gaps. Or I shall pick the E2E test case, next item in back log. 
  • Can someone help me today for design discussion?
  • Team member B: I can help today. We shall decide time after this meet.
  • Rotate to next member.
• At the end of update, people can ask brief question if any. 
• Important: Any longer discussion, or problem solving, or technical discussion - please raise hand to do break out session later.
• Rotate in whole team. 
• Done!

Remember, Agile is all about self-organization, taking feedback, keep adapting to these and keep improving - of-course delivery in smaller chunks, along with increased level of human to human interactions. All these rituals are just enablers for these basic principles.

Following a highly recommended read:

- https://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html

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