Just about all agile methods have some kind of a daily coordination meeting. It might be called a standup or a daily coordination meeting or a daily scrum or any number of other things. The point is that this meeting is focused on actively managing the work and it’s frequently done poorly.
Intention
The point of this meeting is to actively manage the workflow. If we’re just giving a status update then we’re doing it wrong.
Sequence to walk the board
If we have multiple classes of service then we discuss more important classes of service before less important ones. For example, if we have expedited work and standard work then all expedited work gets discussed before any standard work.
Within a class of service, we talk about the work in age order from oldest to newest. Note that this is the age since the item started, not the age since it was created in our ticketing system. Items often sit in the ticketing system for a long time before they start, and that doesn’t make them more important. Being closer to done, does make them more important, as there’s no value until each item is done.
Note that many teams will walk from top to bottom in each column and columns in order from right to left. While this isn’t guaranteed to follow age order, it’s often a close enough approximation and is an easy heuristic to follow.
If you’re using Jira and want a more precise way to follow age order then see the DailyView chart that’s part of my JiraMetrics.
What to discuss for each item
For each item, we want to discuss whatever is necessary to ensure it’s flowing effectively across the board.
→ If it’s active then we’ll want to talk about what’s left and how we can move it further to the right. We’re focused on the work remaining so that we can help each other get it to done. If I say “it’s in progress” then I’ve left no opportunity for others to help me. Instead if I say “I need to figure out how to do the authorization” then someone else might say “I’ve done that before, can I help?”
→ If it’s blocked then we’ll want to talk about how to unblock it. It’s not ok to just let it remain blocked; we need to actively work on unblocking it, even if that’s just a gentle reminder to whoever is blocking us that we’re still waiting.
→ If it’s stalled then we’ll want to discuss that. One item being stalled may not be cause for concern, but having lots of stalled work indicates that we have a real problem.
Note that while I use the word waiting in the video, I call it stalled today. Same idea, but a better word in my mind.
Ensure work is visible
If the team is doing work that’s not visible then we need to make it visible. So I’ll typically ask “is anyone doing anything that’s not on the board?”
The point isn’t to penalize anyone for doing unrelated things but rather to ensure that everything we are doing is visible. It’s hard to improve what we can’t see.
Duration
While I talk through all the points fairly slowly in the video, this is supposed to be a very quick meeting. It’s not unreasonable for this to complete end-to-end in five minutes, and I’ve done that consistently with teams as large as twenty people.
Since it’s supposed to be so quick, I strongly encourage teams to start this meeting on time. If we sit around waiting for people to arrive then I find that the meeting itself starts to drag out.
Start on time, move through it quickly, and then get back to your other work.