The daily stand up is a meeting held each day to ensure each member of a team is on the “same page” of a project. The main purpose of the meeting is not to service as a status meeting, but to provide knowledge of potential challenges and help assign resources to issues that need attention because of difficulty or time constraints. The daily standup was made popular by the Lean and Scrum software development processes, but is considered to be an Agile development tool. The daily stand up emphasizes communication and transparency which are tenets of the Agile Manifesto. In the Scrum software development process, the daily standup is referred to as a scrum (scrum is a term borrowed from rugby terminology). Often times, managers and teams confuse the meeting with the process, and teams boast they are following Scrum when in actuality they are only having a daily stand up meeting.

• A meeting time is established
• All participants stand (to help keep the meeting short)
• Each participant talks about 3 things; What did I do yesterday, What do I plan on doing today, Any blocking issues.
• The meeting should last between 5 and 15 minutes
• Anyone is open to listen, but only committed members of the project can speak

Let’s start with a short story that is used often to help describe the daily standup.

Chicken: Let's start a restaurant!
Pig: What would we call it?
Chicken: Bacon n' Eggs!
Pig: No thanks. I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved!

To relate this story to the process, the committed are people who are responsible for deliverables on the project where the non-committed are people not responsible for deliverables. Often times this translates to developers (committed) and project managers (non-committed). In past experiences, I have had strong push back for the non-committed to add input in these meetings. If they push hard enough, I will suggest they add their input at the end of the meeting with a time limit of only a few minutes. Most of the time this will satisfy their needs, and as the team begins to get the hang of the daily standup, the project managers will realize they do not need to have the “last word” as they previously thought.  

I have found the daily standup only to be effective with 10 people or fewer. For larger projects, breaking into smaller groups and assigning a person as the meeting communicator can be more effective. After the smaller teams meet, a daily stand up of the meeting communicators will happen, where each communicator  will relay information from the smaller stand up’s.

How the stand up works at Web Ascender 

Our stand up is scheduled at 11:45 every morning, we gather in a circle with everyone standing and the meeting begins. I made the observation the other day that starting the meeting is a bit forced, with no one really wanting to talk first. The same few people would start each time, so we decided to take turns every day who starts the meeting, going clock wise. Everyone stands in the same spot for the most part and this has worked out well. Since Web Ascender works on so many different projects at a given time, and normally only one or two people are assigned to the project, our daily stand up's are not text book. For example, we allow everyone in the company to have a chance to talk (6 employees) but for the most part we follow the common format; what did you do yesterday, what do you plan on doing today, are there any blocking issues? Since many of us are active in different communities, we often throw in what we did last night.

Usually this is a grocery list tasks that have been accomplished.

• Created mock ups for client X 
• Finished sprint plan for client Y
• Finished all bugs in client Q, I’m not aware of any other issues, they are ready to go live

We use this to communicate community involvement and often times lighten the mood. 

• Attended the Greater Lansing .net user group, there was a great talk about Active Record if anyone is interested let’s talk later. 
• Attended the Grand River Connection, acquaintance B say’s they are looking for a new web site

This tends to be less of a grocery list of tasks, but more of list of clients:

• Plan on implementing the mock ups for client X in the morning
• I need to give client Y a call about the sprint plan, more than likely get to this in the afternoon
• Move client Q’s code to production, this needs to be done after hours (oh this reminds me does anyone have ……)

Often times during our stand up, participants go into more detail then needed, so someone will suggest taking it “off line” to resolve the issue. Our meetings end up lasting about 10-15 minutes with 6 people speaking. Often times if someone is out of the office, they will call in for the meeting.

When introducing Agile development processes to companies, the daily stand up is often the first tool to be implemented because its low cost and management can see value in it quickly. When I joined Web Ascender roughly six months ago, this was the first agile process we adopted. The daily standup is not only great for keeping everyone up to date issues, it’s a great way to help new members of a team become comfortable with the team. Pick a time that works best for the team, and stick with it. The daily standup is not just for software development companies, it can be implemented on just about any team.