A part of the daily activities for every Scrum team in Agile is to have meetings. The team members all decide a time that works for them, and they meet every day to bring the team members up to date on all the necessary information for improving the coordination for their project. They discuss all the completed tasks and talk about the obstacles they may have faced. Scrum’s three questions are used to structure these meetings.
The meeting does not go on for longer than 15 minutes, but it is an essential component of the entire Scrum process. It takes longer if the size of the team is larger, but the concept remains the same. These meetings are called ‘daily stand up’ and help teams with better coordination and better understand how well the project is progressing. Why do Agile teams need to have these meetings every day? What purpose do they serve? What are its benefits? Read the article below to understand why a daily stand up is necessary.
Daily Stand-Ups Improve Communication
Communication is key to developing effective teamwork, and poor communication can be one of the biggest reasons why a project fails in Agile teams. A daily stand up is a part of the agile methodology because it helps with improving communication among team members. Integrating effective communication with face-to-face contact as a part of the team’s culture helps in creating a more Agile workplace.
Daily Stand-Ups Maintain Transparency in a Project
A daily stand-up is a good way to share each team member’s work with the rest of the team. It helps in jotting down roles and responsibilities clearly and concisely and preventing silos as well. This creates a sense of transparency about the project’s progress as every team member is fully aware of what the other members of the team are doing and accomplishing on a daily basis.
Daily Stand-Ups Help With Building Trust in an Agile Team
Effective communication and total transparency within the team create a sense of trust, especially when all the work is being discussed daily. The team shares a common goal and has different roles in achieving it, and with daily stand-ups, there is a feeling of being a part of a whole created, which leads to building trust in the team members and the project itself. This is very important for the completion and success of a project.
Daily Stand-Ups Help In Exposing and Addressing All Issues with the Project
Talking about the daily tasks while completing a project and sharing notes with the other team members will bring up ongoing issues with the project. Sometimes issues faced by the entire company are uncovered with daily stand-ups, regardless of the department. Companies can use daily stand-ups to discuss ways in which they can embrace changes and discuss issues that come with the daily operations of an organization or during the lifetime of a project.
Daily Stand-Ups Can Be Used to Improve Teamwork
Team members have tasks to finish and short deadlines to do so, and they need to get to them as soon as possible so as to avoid any delays with the deadlines. This keeps everyone occupied all the time, which means the sense of teamwork that is crucial to an organization goes missing. With daily stand-ups, however, team members can spend 15 minutes a day discussing their problems and achievements along with the tasks they have to compete with each other.
This creates some quality time that members of each team have to spend with the team, leading to creating a sense of teamwork. It can empower colleagues to work as a team as well and give out reminders about what the business objective really is in case anyone is losing focus.
Daily Stand-Ups Improve Knowledge Transfer
Not only does the relationship between employees and team members improve with a daily stand-up, but regular team meetings also help in improving the rate of knowledge transfer that takes place within the company. This helps in creating a wide understanding within the team about the projects and their progress, among other tasks at hand.
Daily Stand-Ups Help Teams Understand Their Shared Goals
The main focus of a daily stand-up is to discuss the goals they have as individuals and as a team. This creates a shared understanding of all common goals that the team has when it comes to a project and its business objective. This creates a presence of shared goals because, without shared goals, there is no team, only a group of individuals working alongside each other.
The do’s and don’ts of a daily stand-up.
Make Sure Everyone is Actually Standing Up.
Why stand up and not sit down and have these meetings? The research found that daily stand-ups last about 63% longer when the meeting is conducted while the team members are seated. A stand-up is supposed to be short, which won’t happen once team members are comfortably seated. Keep the daily stand-up in a room with open space.
Keep the Daily Stand-up Short.
The daily stand-up needs to be short, no longer than 15 minutes. This will urge team members to bring out the most important issues and discuss them. If any part of the meeting needs to be discussed further, it can always take place separately because anything longer becomes a full-fledged meeting.
Stick to The Topic at Hand
Team members need to divide the time and assign no more than 2 minutes to discuss their parts each. This will make sure each team member stays on topic. If there is no time limit assigned, one team member can hold out a discussion for nearly the entirety of the stand-up, making it a discussion or report and not a status update.
Maintain Discipline when it Comes to Timing
Pick a time, teams usually do this at the beginning of the day and stick with it as a team. This will create a habit with the team members. To create a more consistent environment, it is also recommended to have the daily stand-up in one location every day.
Final Thoughts
A daily stand-up is an important practice in the Agile methodology, and teams who practice it have found that they are more focused and productive when it comes to achieving their targets and goals. By following the above-mentioned guideline, teams can increase the benefit of the daily stand-up meetings.
To successfully conduct and participate in an Agile daily stand-up is not enough to increase the team’s productivity. By training team members in the Agile methodology, they can not only improve their workflow as members of the team, but they can also improve the overall discipline in their lives personally, which will only improve the working environment of the organization.
