Standups historically are an exercise in “steering the ship”. Back in the 90’s when releases were occurring on a yearly or bi-yearly basis, they would have monthly steering.
These 12 month release cycles became 12 week release cycles, split into two six-week “sprints”, this being where the concept of sprints originated. Well now if we’re aiming to operate in 6 week sprints, monthly steering means we only get a one or two of these steering datapoints each cycle to keep the project on track. If we move to weekly steering, that’s still only 6 datapoints per sprint. Daily steering starts to make more sense now..
Standup then, is a coordination exercise at the beginning of the work day. It is not a meeting for providing a status update, it is a very short term planning meeting for how we are moving forward today.
He gives an analogy of American football. In American football you have four “downs”, four goes to get 10 yards of ground on the pitch. Before each of those goes, the players huddle and have a conversation. The conversation is not small talk. The conversation is also not focused on how well the previous down went or individual performances therein. The conversation is entirely this:
- We need to move forward.
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How do we do that?
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Reframe the discussion to be:
What’s the best possible today we can have?
Do you have any information that might make my day better or different?
- Is a piece of information actually likely to impact other people’s day in a meaningful way?
So if standup isn’t a status meeting, when do status updates happen?
Status updates happen by the team caring about status updates.
He gives an example of having someone going around asking people if they want tea, whilst asking them how their day is going. The person is picking up status from each of the people they talk to, and possibly even a more truthful status, as someone may be less likely to talk about a crappy day they’re having at standup.
Standup meetings then become:
- 2 minute update on the complete state of the world
- This is the status of everything
- You don’t need to report on status
- Which work is moving?
The three standard questions are fundamentally misunderstood:
- What were you working on yesterday?
- What are you working on today?
- Are you blocked?
The questions, in fact, are:
- What work items moved yesterday?
- What work items are likely to move today?
- If it isn’t, we can identify and investigate.
- What work items are blocked?
- We can move to unblock.
People are never blocked. Work gets blocked. If you think you are blocked, context switch.