What is the purpose of Standup Meetings?
Software development teams use the stand up meeting to drive focus on blockers, if any, that are hindering progress so that the team can plan strategies to overcome them. The team collaborates and calibrates by discussing progress, game-plan, and bottlenecks to ensure successful delivery. Essentially, the standup meetings aids in team cooperation and communication, keeps the team in the loop of progress made, and provides guidance and solutions when needed.
The Scrum guide suggests that the format for any daily stand-up meeting should answer the questions:
- What did you accomplish yesterday?
- What are you working on today?
- Are there any blockers in your way?
The first two questions, when answered comprehensively by team members, provide visibility into each teammate’s progress on assigned tasks. This can help managers recognize and duly credit team members’ contributions and efforts. It also helps managers and leaders to stay in the loop of the activities and efforts that their team undertakes, providing a viewpoint to progress made in the development lifecycle.
The third question that brings blockers to light helps managers identify obstacles and challenges, a.k.a., blockers that might be hindering the team member’s successful completion of the task. Gaining visibility into progress and roadblocks can help managers coordinate efforts to resolve blockers and complete sprints successfully.
The common pitfalls of standup meetings and how to manage them:
Even tried and tested processes can be subject to snags. Here are the most common pitfalls to watch for while running daily stand-ups:
Hurried responses
Dev team standups are an essential tool to ensure that the team is progressing towards successfully completing sprints and project roadmap milestones. When the stand up is treated as just a check-in call without providing detailed inputs into their task status, difficulties and expected timelines of completion, dev managers lose the opportunity to course-correct, modify, or calibrate project roadmaps.
Dev teams should take their time in thinking about their activities and efforts and also any blockers they might need help on. They should retrospect on their contributions and anticipate potential blockers to provide in-depth updates that not only help keep the entire team in the loop of events, but also provide valuable insight into potential risks or challenges.
Lack of data-driven discussions
When developers provide only anecdotal updates without a data perspective into their efforts and blockers, it can derail the optimization of team roadmaps and resources.