The New Daily Stand Up

I’ve spoken about the Daily Stand Up before. I’ve also talked about how it didn’t work right for us. Some time in the last couple of weeks I came across a blog post that resonated with me on these meetings.

See, I’m all for Scrum. It’s a great tool. The process framework is something that will really help enable change in most organizations. That said, Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. The Agilist in me can not allow Scrum to become a sacred cow.

So what is this great change to create the new daily stand-up? Drop the three questions and stick with one. If the answer is positive move on. If the answer is negative discussion on why not and how to change it to yes is all that is allowed. Oh, and it’s not the specifics of how to move them to yes, it’s more about an overview of solving blockers and lowering risks.

What’s the question? “How confident are you (the team) that we will meet our goal by our target?” That’s it. Short. Succinct. Relevant. Easy.

There’s on caution I would bring that I didn’t notice listed. The team needs to be mature and communicate well. They must have figured out how to continuously collaborate in their daily work. If it is a group of individuals and not a team this may not be better than the classic stand-up.

I’m not going to steal the thunder from Cheryl Hammond on this one. Go read the post – “The One Thing: Successful Daily Standups.” Add it to your toolkit, and use it. I’m looking at how to.

Have you re-constructed daily stand-ups in a new way? What have you found works for what kind of team?