My main issue with this approach is that I think stand ups should be focused on the ongoing work, not on the particular individuals partaking in the process. The everybody says what they did yesterday, what they are going to do today and if there's anything blocking them approach is a waste of time because people feel compelled to justify their use of time and talk about irrelevant details so that nobody thinks that they were wasting time.
My preferred way of running stand ups is to gather around the board and then go through all the tasks that are in process, for each task, everybody who has relevant information shares it, we check that we know how to move forward and that there is nothing blocking us, and then we move on. That's substantially harder to do on slack. It could potentially work, but only if people are participating synchronously, which defeats the point of your article.
I kind of like the stand up meeting as a daily kick-off, it's convenient to have everybody there to talk about important stuff, plan what we are going to do today and, if there's something urgent, decide how we are going to handle it.
I have only observed the cons you mention about stand ups (dragging on and on, people failing to show up on time consistently, nobody working until after the stand up, talking about irrelevant stuff...) when either (a) the meeting is not effectively facilitated or (b) there is something wrong in the team dynamics. Moving to slack solves neither issue.
If it's valuable for your team, I don't see why not. In our stand ups I think I can fill in anybody who missed the stand up easily, plus most of the important stuff is on the board anyway, so I don't write notes for it, but I write them for other meetings and it's quite useful.
My exact thoughts, I've been working with agile teams (and kind of a mix of methodologies) and have made most of the mistakes mentioned in the article, but I've actually managed to solve them all through some very simple "hey, check your tasks before the meeting", or an even simpler "aaalright, you guys go talk about that later on, let's keep the meeting going".
I've checked Basecamp's approach on asynchronous daily updates, which works very similarly to a Slack bot, but it brings up other issues, specially cultural ones. To mention one of them, written daily updates tend to be even more concise than in a daily meeting, which may lead to someone not mentioning something important, which leads to people asking for more details, which on it's own raises the old email-thread issue, where a single topic takes hours/days to be settled, when a 2min talk could've solved it.
And please, agile mindset is all about being practical and solve issues that matter while taking people in consideration more than processes and tools. If a daily meeting is not working, change it, try new dynamics with the team, schedule a daily meeting in the coffee table.. Anyway, there are simpler ways to solve problems such as these.
We've tried a few (a lot!!) different methods with our daily scrums and we've recently settled on what we call 'Walking the board'. This is more focussed on moving tasks across the board rather than everyone giving individual updates and so far we've found it a more enjoyable and effective.
We've also started rotating the role of 'Scrum Master Lite', who makes sure daily scrum is started on time and pops a summary on slack for team members who were in meetings/unavaiable etc.
Lots of different approaches, so I guess find one thats good for you and don't be afraid to try something new 😃
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My main issue with this approach is that I think stand ups should be focused on the ongoing work, not on the particular individuals partaking in the process. The everybody says what they did yesterday, what they are going to do today and if there's anything blocking them approach is a waste of time because people feel compelled to justify their use of time and talk about irrelevant details so that nobody thinks that they were wasting time.
My preferred way of running stand ups is to gather around the board and then go through all the tasks that are in process, for each task, everybody who has relevant information shares it, we check that we know how to move forward and that there is nothing blocking us, and then we move on. That's substantially harder to do on slack. It could potentially work, but only if people are participating synchronously, which defeats the point of your article.
I kind of like the stand up meeting as a daily kick-off, it's convenient to have everybody there to talk about important stuff, plan what we are going to do today and, if there's something urgent, decide how we are going to handle it.
I have only observed the cons you mention about stand ups (dragging on and on, people failing to show up on time consistently, nobody working until after the stand up, talking about irrelevant stuff...) when either (a) the meeting is not effectively facilitated or (b) there is something wrong in the team dynamics. Moving to slack solves neither issue.
What do you think about creating a sort of a "minute" of the meeting after it takes place?
We do minutes for all meetings and it's super helpful.
Yeah, I suspect they are. It's a good way to have a log of what happened and to help anyone who might be missing for any reason to catch up.
If it's valuable for your team, I don't see why not. In our stand ups I think I can fill in anybody who missed the stand up easily, plus most of the important stuff is on the board anyway, so I don't write notes for it, but I write them for other meetings and it's quite useful.
Thanks!
My exact thoughts, I've been working with agile teams (and kind of a mix of methodologies) and have made most of the mistakes mentioned in the article, but I've actually managed to solve them all through some very simple "hey, check your tasks before the meeting", or an even simpler "aaalright, you guys go talk about that later on, let's keep the meeting going".
I've checked Basecamp's approach on asynchronous daily updates, which works very similarly to a Slack bot, but it brings up other issues, specially cultural ones. To mention one of them, written daily updates tend to be even more concise than in a daily meeting, which may lead to someone not mentioning something important, which leads to people asking for more details, which on it's own raises the old email-thread issue, where a single topic takes hours/days to be settled, when a 2min talk could've solved it.
And please, agile mindset is all about being practical and solve issues that matter while taking people in consideration more than processes and tools. If a daily meeting is not working, change it, try new dynamics with the team, schedule a daily meeting in the coffee table.. Anyway, there are simpler ways to solve problems such as these.
👍👍👍 Agree with this
We've tried a few (a lot!!) different methods with our daily scrums and we've recently settled on what we call 'Walking the board'. This is more focussed on moving tasks across the board rather than everyone giving individual updates and so far we've found it a more enjoyable and effective.
We've also started rotating the role of 'Scrum Master Lite', who makes sure daily scrum is started on time and pops a summary on slack for team members who were in meetings/unavaiable etc.
Lots of different approaches, so I guess find one thats good for you and don't be afraid to try something new 😃