I'd like to believe that business professionals don't like unnecessary meetings, especially in day to day work. However, over the years I've come to understand that many professionals in all different types of industries simply enjoy being busy. It becomes a safe and familiar justification or excuse for not producing key results or taking big leaps forward. I often hear: I'm too busy, I have too many calls, I'm overwhelmed, I've been in calls all day, I haven't had any time to think, etc. It's easier to be busy than to focus on setting key priorities to make your work impactful.
Meetings then become a routine, an easy escape, a way to "run out the clock" of the day. Meetings keep you distracted and focused on the mundane, doing many small urgent tasks, which consume you day after day. Taking this approach you'll fail to focus on making progress toward important tasks, milestones and goals that will actually help increase your skills, experience and improve your business.
However, there is an exception to the unnecessary meeting. A meeting that provides a critical window of opportunity for team communication and collaboration. It goes way beyond the senseless status update (typically for senior management), or needless check-in calls so often used by sales or business stakeholders. Its purpose is to promote team discussion, clarify goals and objectives for the day, and to diagnose and deal with issues before they actually become problematic. This value is provided by the stand-up meeting.
It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
- Napolean Hill
What's the purpose of a stand-up meeting?
The purpose of a stand-up meeting is to facilitate open communication to increase team collaboration. The meeting provides a mechanism for this collaboration for everyone involved with the team's day to day happenings.
It provides leadership an opportunity to connect with the individual team members. Also, gives the team members consistent access to leadership, which serves to assist them with their individual work requests when necessary. The stand-up itself can provide an overview of the current work happening within your team, although viewing it solely in those terms is a disservice to the importance of meeting.
The name comes from the idea that attendees should be standing during the call to help ensure the call is short. It's often used within agile teams and is usually part of the agile events process.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much
- Helen Keller
What's the agenda of a stand-up meeting
Consistency is at the heart of the stand-up meeting. It needs to be a regular call, taking place at the same time (and location if applicable) each work day. All team members are required to attend, but the meetings are not delayed or postponed if some of the team members are not present.
No matter if you have an existing check-in meeting with your team or if you've recently transitioned from waterfall to agile, the purpose of the call should be made very clear to all participants.
A common format I've seen is as follows:
- What I worked on yesterday
- What I will work on today
- Any blockers to my work
The individual team members update everyone on the call with their progress, questions or any outstanding problems that are noteworthy for the group. Everyone is called on to give their update without exception. If this is a development focused project ticket numbers should be referenced and annotated with comments or questions during or immediately following the meeting.
These calls are meant to be quick and focused. As mentioned, the idea is that you should be "standing up" during the call. I've lead multiple teams with various companies where we had over a dozen people on the stand-up call and we'd regularly complete the stand up in 15 - 20 minutes. During my time working with various in-house remote teams and managing offshore teams, the regular cadence of stand-up calls was always within 30 minutes.
Further, any changes to the regular stand-up call need to be done via a collective agreement with the team. Or at the very least discussed with leadership and key participants of the call. While it's completely acceptable for people to cover for each other, give updates on behalf of others, or make a small adjustment to the call (for holidays or to prevent conflicts with company-wide calls, etc.) those changes should only be temporary. The overall structure of the established call should not significantly change unless it's a team decision to make a new change.
Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability
- Patrick Lencioni
Running the stand-up meeting
First, you'll need to determine a primary owner of the stand-up call. This is the person who sends the meeting invites and facilitates the call. Quite often this role is assumed by a scrum master. However, it doesn't only have to be a scrum master who runs the call. A manager, senior developer, product owner, project manager or really anyone else can serve in this role. The important part is consistency. While you should have an alternate in case the primary person is on vacation, sick or unavailable, that primary should be leading the call close to 100% of the time.
Second, you will need to determine the timing of the call. Regularity here is critical. The timing of the stand-up meeting needs to be such that it works for everyone on the team to be available to participate. You must factor in various needs for example: personal schedules, holiday schedules, time zones, remote workers, other mandatory calls, etc. In order to have effective stand-up calls they should be consistent and not vary in their timing.
On the actual calls, make sure everyone is given a chance to speak. I typically like to follow an order when running stand up calls so I don't miss anyone. Also, you can always work in the phrase, "Did I miss anyone" or "Did anyone have anything else before we close" to make sure everyone is given a chance to speak.
Finally, stay focused on the updates. Don't allow the agenda to be derailed by a conversation. Avoid allowing full-blown discussions about a specific problem or issue to happen in the stand-up call. Simple clarifications or brief questions are acceptable and should be encouraged. If a simple question or blocker begins to balloon into a long narrative cut it short and set up a follow up meeting so that updates can continue.
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
- Booker T. Washington
Dealing with blockers
As mentioned in the prior section, you should not let the stand-up meeting be derailed by complex topics or long conversations. However, you must deal swiftly with any blocker that significantly impacts the team. Here is a suggested process for dealing with blockers:
- Show gratitude by thanking those who raised the issue. You want to encourage people to speak up and surface important team issues.
- Kindly urge the main participants to hang back to sort thorough the problem once all the updates have been given
- Release anyone on the stand-up call not involved with the issue after completion of the updates so they can carry on with their workday
- Give each participate a chance to speak in more detail about any challenges or difficult situations they are facing
- If a plan cannot be formulated or potential solution attained within the remaining meeting time schedule follow up time for later that day
- Ensure leadership is informed of any significant issue and ensure the issue is discussed on the next stand-up meeting
Team members should also be encouraged to coordinate, document and knowledge share to resolve issues or problems especially if they have repeated in the past. Groups should use an internal system like an intranet or internal wiki to help document any common problems so it's familiar to everyone on the team.
Follow-up conversations about blockers are a natural result of the stand-up meeting. While initially it might seem problematic having these discussions, working through issues helps to foster team building, encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing. This ultimately improves the output and efficiency of the team.
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.
- Michael Jordan
Long term success with the stand-up meeting
Not all meetings are unproductive, and now you understand that the stand-up meeting is essential for producing highly effective teams. Unorganized and inconsistent "check-in" calls waste time and focus. A daily stand-up meeting is brief, organized, structured and adds value to and for your team.
Stand-up meetings are part of a results-only work environment. They promote open and honest conversation by allowing each person a chance to speak on their work and voice their opinions and feedback. The blockers that arise from the stand-up call which are discussed either during or after the call encourage teamwork. By helping team members to self organize and coordinate their efforts to share information to resolve difficult or time consuming problems. This is achieved by identifying issues before they become too problematic.
The process promotes closer working relationships by allowing for consistent communication and collaboration among team members. The frequency of the stand-up results in increased knowledge transfer and proactive problem solving. This happens much more deliberately with the structure provided by the stand-up meeting.