How can you benefit from daily stand-ups?

I my experience shifting to keeping the sprint Goal in focus is key! Focus on the outcome! What do we want the board to look like tomorrow? What is going to stop us from doing that? The Daily Scrum is a planning meeting after all. Whoever is facilitating that daily scrum should do prep work. Items aging has it been in a state a long time. Are the team members multitasking. Having some of this info can help steer the conversation if it’s heading in the direction something unattainable.

I like the standup because of the visibility it gives to all the members of the team on how a team is progressing towards the sprint goal. This fosters ownership from individuals and is a great step towards collaboration, any learnings or mitigating blockers. This also is a platform(provided that 15 mins can be extended) to do team bonding, well not saying it must be a part of stand up but an extension of standup as this is the place where the team meets for the first time in the day.

I also find daily stand ups helpful to resolve any blockers both within and outside the teams. It is also a good opportunity to discuss challenges that team might be facing and coming up with alternate solutions.

Daily standup is a personal commit to the development I believe in those three questions and the scrum master should make sure we focus on those instead of deviating discussion....What are stumbling blocks is a question which may elongate . And would like to add one more What is it that you can offer to bring to the table to reduce the age of any lingering issue ? I feel a motivated team will always try to understand the importance of daily standup and try to make it effective.

Remote product teams can benefit greatly from daily standups. These brief virtual meetings enhance communication, align objectives, and promote quick issue resolution. They foster accountability, efficient task management, and team cohesion. Real-time progress updates and iterative improvements further optimize workflow. In the remote work landscape, daily standups are a vital tool for maximizing productivity and team success.

My recommendation is to not use the three questions. Instead, talk about what do we need to do as a team to make sure we can keep moving forward. Daily Stand-Ups (or Scrums) are not just for Scrum teams. Kanban, XP, and other teams can also take advantage of these. A highly recommended practice is to use Work Item Age. What on our board is taking too long and how do we come together to get those items moving?

I like to run daily stand-ups by focusing on answering actionable questions instead of boring status reports. The questions are: 1 - "What can we finish today?": Prioritise task completion. 2 - "Is anyone doing something not listed here?": Identify hidden work, promoting transparency. 3 - "Can we pull any card?": Avoid delays. 4 - "What to tackle together?": Address bottlenecks. 5 - "Any urgent cards?": Keep priorities clear. 6 - "Any cards with impediments?": Don't remove blocked cards from the Kanban. 7 - "Do all cards have an owner?": Tasks should have someone responsible. 8 - "Is anyone holding too many tasks?": Evenly distribute the workload.

Remember, the three questions were never a part of scrum and yet continue to appear as recommendations as people see them as a way to work through the daily stand up. I don’t recommend teams use those questions. Instead, they should get focused on who this meeting is for. It’s for the team, by the team, to know if the team is going to make the teams’ commitments. It’s much less about the questions asked or how long it takes.

Time boxing the stand up to 15 minutes is often underrated. Sometimes daily scrum calls end up going all over the place with requirement clarifications and technical discussions happening as soon as someone calls out an impediment they are dealing with. The best scrum masters I have worked with have always intervened to gently remind the team to put a pin on that topic and arrange a meeting/call right after the daily scrum as it is outside the scope of the call, strictly speaking. This ensures that the call is not seen by all as a chore to get through everyday but rather as a quick connect to check progress towards the sprint goal as laid out in the Scrum guide.

It allows the following: 1. Maintain velocity 2. Discuss hurdles to eliminate 3. Effort and time management 4. Brings people face to face, so transparent and quick resolutions 5. And so on...

The most common one that I have seen is - getting into discussions in the middle of someone status. Once you master the art of politely moving that conversation to little later and give enough time after stand up to discuss those have really helped.

Avoid talking to the scrum master during the event. They are there to facilitate, but often times end up asking each person for a status update. The best Scrum Masters say nothing at daily scrum.

When the daily becomes centered on "what has kept you busy in the past 24h and what will keep you busy in the next 24h" rather than on managing the current work in progress and joining forces as a team to help take it over the finish line.

1. Becoming Monotonous: If not actively managed, daily stand-ups can become repetitive and lose their effectiveness. 2. Skipping the Ceremonies: Sometimes, due to pressing work, teams might skip stand-ups, which breaks the rhythm and can lead to misalignments. 3. Dominating Voices: There's a risk of louder team members overshadowing others, which can lead to missing crucial details.

One of the biggest pitfalls I see is when the the meeting deteriorates from a planning meeting, which it ought to be, into a status meeting, which has limited value to anyone. It's about value delivered and planning, not status!

IMHO using flow metrics to drive daily stand-ups and talking objectively based on facts will make it more effective. Eg-Work item age. Look for items which are aging in your board and have conversations on those items on what is holding them. Suppose your SLE ( service level expectations is 7 days 85%) which means 85 % of times, items get competed in 7 days or less and we have an item which is already close to SLE then having discussion on this item couple enable flow Questions to ask? 1. Is this item big. Do we need to split it into smaller one? 2. Is this item dependent on some other team? 3. Is this item blocked? How can we unblock it ? Can we swarm or take action to resolve this? 4. Do we have right skills to take care of this item?

The retro meeting is a perfect place to discuss this and get feedback. I have tried asking explicit questions like how do you think stand ups are working, do you need any changes and have tried to experiment a few things before finalizing. It varies from team to team, you just need to find the right balance that works for your team. Introducing parking lot, and constantly reminding team members and stake holders to keep the daily stand up focus on the 3 questions and moving everything else to parking lot has helped my team immensely.

1. Feedback Loop: Regularly solicit feedback from the team about the stand-up's effectiveness and make necessary adjustments. 2. Track Blocker Resolution: Monitor how quickly impediments raised during stand-ups are addressed. This can be a good measure of the meeting's effectiveness. 3. Engagement Levels: Observing team members' participation can indicate the value they’re deriving from the stand-up.

Agree with the team what the primary focus of the dailys is - is it improved communication flow? focus enhancement by readjusting to their goals? Take the time to define how to measure the outcome and do so, for example by introducing a "Health Check" style questionnaire for overall team health.

Daily standups can be useful and essential for triaging and managing priorities. Some team members may need alternate alignments to bring about a feature in the current sprint. Dependencies are highlighted and slacking is addressed with more skills added from other team members. Its also a place where a quick resolution can be achieved when multiple stakeholders are involved.

I have used a combination of zoom and slack. Deciding on the best time considering different geographical locations and time zones, setting up reminders on slack, and using the jira board to have a visual of tickets have helped.

1. Remote Teams: Use video conferencing tools, ensuring that everyone has their camera on for better engagement. 2. Cross-Functional Teams: Occasionally invite members from other teams (like a representative of marketing or sales team) to provide a broader context or gather additional insights. 3. Scale: For larger teams, consider splitting into smaller groups for more focused stand-ups, while maintaining a periodic sync-up between groups.

Remember… it’s a planning meeting, not a status meeting. The team should be using this time to plan their work for the day and discuss progress on the sprint goal. If the team thinks this meeting doesn’t have value, they probably aren’t using it to plan.

SCRUM Team should clearly understand the purpose and the value of Daily Scrums and they should believe it really helps them to achieve their Sprint goals. Team should attend Daily scrums with prior preparation and should strictly follow timebox. Daily Scrums are not for 1. Status update 2. Technical discussions 3. Impediment solving 4. Just Moving tasks Daily Scrums are 1. Short plan 2. Identifying impediments 3. Prioritising tasks 4. Collaborating as a team

Well, if you are struggling with empowerment and decision making in your team, think about adding "Decision Daily" to your stand up: if a team member has to decide something on that day, they get to talk about it: what is it, how are they going to decide (e.g. themselves, an expert, ...) and do they want someone to support them there or are they comfortable with it. This increases transparency of decisions as well as the feeling of self-efficacy over the long run.