These are some of the videos that make me feel so grateful to the creators of youtube. The amount of learning you can do here is enormous. Thank you for challenging my thoughts on team standup meetings. I was not cognisant of the effect of focussing on the individual rathe than the task. Thank you so much.
It was in 2015 and still is very actual. It is generic, it is not only for Scrum. Many other types of meetings are affected by the "queued self-presentation model which affects the expected result of the meeting negatively.
Nice I started doing this more because I found it easier and also could check that the tasks where actually in the board and the correct status was set. Makes me feel a bit better knowing this is a good way to do this.
I like the example of the meeting round table where you are concentrating and rehearsing what you are going to say so you don't sound stupid, and when your turn is done you tune out and relax for a moment. I've always observed these tuning out behaviours in every team that does the official daily scrum. You can watch the body language that people in the group are not paying full attention to the person that is speaking even when they're explaining something important or urgent. Everyone tunes out and is only interested in the things they are directly working on. From the moment my groups started agile we quickly ditched the official daily scrum format for the walking the board format. It's a much more successful technique that also reinforces the priorities on the team. What are the highest priority items for the team today? Why has this item been blocked two days? Who can help work on it? If you're not working on the things at the top of the board, you're working on the wrong priority. No more planning individually (the things you'd like to work on), no more committing to today's work individually (choosing the easy things). Let's work like a team and together help each other get today's highest priority items to done. The priorities may change tomorrow but we'll deal with that tomorrow. Walking the board helps reinforce the common sense of purpose, the shared goal of what is important, the cards at the top of the board. And Dan Pink has proven how important a sense of purpose is in Drive and personal motivation. In my experience it is always a more effective approach than the official scrum format. Nice video.
I'm impressed that you "quickly ditched the official daily scrum format" (because I had no clue that there was a better way... until it was put in front of me). Can you recall what triggered the change? And how did you know what-to-change-to?
Without pair programming - which is rare in our organisation - people work individually in isolation. This originated from previous product knowledge. The dev with most knowledge on a previous feature was the best person to code new improvements to that feature. Or the person with the most UI experience was the best person to code the UI features. Junior devs were often assigned trivial simple tasks. Regardless each person was working on a different feature with no interest in the features the rest of the team are working on. Standing back and observing body language you could see people gazing at the ceiling, the floor, and not interacting at all until it was their turn to stand up. Even when a new impediment was mentioned nobody else participated (it wasn't their 'turn'). Some of this could be cultural, not speaking up in front of your peers or 'boss', and if an issue was important someone else would have raised the concern, right? There was another factor that triggered the change of focus. Initially people were told they pull their own work across the board, they choose what to work on next, rather than a manager or leader telling them what to do. In most cases people always chose the easiest things first; the simple things I know I can do within the estimates because I don't want to stand up in front of others to be punished or embarrassed for not completing work. In only a few sprints it was clear that the highest priority and often challenging work was always being avoided. And people were not speaking up about the issues and blocks that were previously raised - because nobody wanted to take ownership of them. I can't remember exactly who initiated the change, but at the end of the round table of daily stand up the PO, SM and dev lead still had unanswered questions about some of the priority or blocked cards on the board prompting more conversation 'whats happening about this task?' After a few days we had switched to talking about the cards and walking the board rather than the round table. It made instant improvement to team collaboration.
Thank you so much for sharing that. All of the behaviours you describe, I recognise. I'm impressed that you were able to (a) identify the problem and (b) make a change. And do so in a short period of time.
Absolutely spot on! Thank you. I've lived this so many times. The old model takes a lot of head space in preparing a good story. Will definitely be urging the team to walk the board in future.
I had my team try this out today and I was definitely surprised at the results! The stand up was completed in less than 10 minutes with very minimal or no distractions and we were able to answer the 3 typical stand up questions by walking by our board items.
@@Developmentthatpays - I created a new Jira board to facilitate this and presented it in our Retro yesterday. There was definitely lots of interest and I'll continue to push for us to use it. Just making the new board following your example, I now have a much better grasp of our workload and the status of all the stories in the sprint.
Wouldn't this model produce something similar to round robin? If an item is assigned to a single person and the team follows the pattern here described, each person would focus on creating a good story about the progress they have done and would fall into the same problem as round robin. Maybe some preparation is needed by the team members prior to the meeting? Maybe I'm getting something wrong? Still, I find this model amazing, and I think I will use it in my Daily Scrums. 😄
So true. I can see this very often in our team. After giving their status some of our team members (including me sometimes) are paying more attention to their smartphone than to the currently speaking team member.
Hi, how do you keep a log of progress day by day when walking the board? Who is logging the comments? And what if there are a lot of ticket items - how do you keep the stand up to 5 minutes? Thanks
Not sure this is a complete answer, but I'll have a go: - How do you keep a log of progress day by day? The board itself is an indicator of progress. - Who is logging the comments? In most cases, there's no need to log any comments. But there may be a need for individuals to meet immediately after standup to discuss items that arise. - And what if there are a lot of ticket items - how do you keep the stand up to 5 minutes? (Standups are usually capped at 15 minutes.) Again, the board is helpful: by starting at the top right and working towards the left, the team talks about the most important items first.
There is no rule that says that you can not have a card with your 3 questions-answers as a guide for your intervention in the stand-up meeting, so in that way you can pay attention to all the team member's interventions without distractions because you know when is your turn you will have a card that will help you out with your intervention. Your video really does not have sense... and we ALWAYS add the name of the team member whos is responsible of the task/user story in the card over the Scrum Board, this is not new.
These are some of the videos that make me feel so grateful to the creators of youtube. The amount of learning you can do here is enormous. Thank you for challenging my thoughts on team standup meetings. I was not cognisant of the effect of focussing on the individual rathe than the task. Thank you so much.
What a lovely comment. Thank you!
It was in 2015 and still is very actual. It is generic, it is not only for Scrum. Many other types of meetings are affected by the "queued self-presentation model which affects the expected result of the meeting negatively.
Nice I started doing this more because I found it easier and also could check that the tasks where actually in the board and the correct status was set. Makes me feel a bit better knowing this is a good way to do this.
I like the example of the meeting round table where you are concentrating and rehearsing what you are going to say so you don't sound stupid, and when your turn is done you tune out and relax for a moment. I've always observed these tuning out behaviours in every team that does the official daily scrum. You can watch the body language that people in the group are not paying full attention to the person that is speaking even when they're explaining something important or urgent. Everyone tunes out and is only interested in the things they are directly working on.
From the moment my groups started agile we quickly ditched the official daily scrum format for the walking the board format. It's a much more successful technique that also reinforces the priorities on the team. What are the highest priority items for the team today? Why has this item been blocked two days? Who can help work on it? If you're not working on the things at the top of the board, you're working on the wrong priority. No more planning individually (the things you'd like to work on), no more committing to today's work individually (choosing the easy things). Let's work like a team and together help each other get today's highest priority items to done. The priorities may change tomorrow but we'll deal with that tomorrow.
Walking the board helps reinforce the common sense of purpose, the shared goal of what is important, the cards at the top of the board. And Dan Pink has proven how important a sense of purpose is in Drive and personal motivation. In my experience it is always a more effective approach than the official scrum format. Nice video.
I'm impressed that you "quickly ditched the official daily scrum format" (because I had no clue that there was a better way... until it was put in front of me). Can you recall what triggered the change? And how did you know what-to-change-to?
Without pair programming - which is rare in our organisation - people work individually in isolation. This originated from previous product knowledge. The dev with most knowledge on a previous feature was the best person to code new improvements to that feature. Or the person with the most UI experience was the best person to code the UI features. Junior devs were often assigned trivial simple tasks. Regardless each person was working on a different feature with no interest in the features the rest of the team are working on.
Standing back and observing body language you could see people gazing at the ceiling, the floor, and not interacting at all until it was their turn to stand up. Even when a new impediment was mentioned nobody else participated (it wasn't their 'turn').
Some of this could be cultural, not speaking up in front of your peers or 'boss', and if an issue was important someone else would have raised the concern, right?
There was another factor that triggered the change of focus.
Initially people were told they pull their own work across the board, they choose what to work on next, rather than a manager or leader telling them what to do.
In most cases people always chose the easiest things first; the simple things I know I can do within the estimates because I don't want to stand up in front of others to be punished or embarrassed for not completing work.
In only a few sprints it was clear that the highest priority and often challenging work was always being avoided. And people were not speaking up about the issues and blocks that were previously raised - because nobody wanted to take ownership of them.
I can't remember exactly who initiated the change, but at the end of the round table of daily stand up the PO, SM and dev lead still had unanswered questions about some of the priority or blocked cards on the board prompting more conversation 'whats happening about this task?'
After a few days we had switched to talking about the cards and walking the board rather than the round table. It made instant improvement to team collaboration.
Thank you so much for sharing that. All of the behaviours you describe, I recognise. I'm impressed that you were able to (a) identify the problem and (b) make a change. And do so in a short period of time.
Absolutely spot on! Thank you. I've lived this so many times. The old model takes a lot of head space in preparing a good story. Will definitely be urging the team to walk the board in future.
Excellent! Would love to hear how you get on.
I've observed the same behaviors with my team. Will definitely try this out!
Ron Del Rosario - Excellent! Let me know how you get on.
I had my team try this out today and I was definitely surprised at the results! The stand up was completed in less than 10 minutes with very minimal or no distractions and we were able to answer the 3 typical stand up questions by walking by our board items.
Ron Del Rosario - That's awesome!
u spoke my heart word to word
Lovely!
OMG, this is so true.
Delighted that it resonated with you.👍
Spot on!
Thank you!
Exactly!
this is good stuff, thank you!
Really glad you liked it 👍
Love it. So simple, so effective. Thanks!
Brenton - Glad you liked it!
You described my teams standup dead-on; our meetings are perfectly useless. I can't wait to share this with my team and try walking the board instead.
Did you get a chance to try it? How did it work out?
@@Developmentthatpays - I created a new Jira board to facilitate this and presented it in our Retro yesterday. There was definitely lots of interest and I'll continue to push for us to use it. Just making the new board following your example, I now have a much better grasp of our workload and the status of all the stories in the sprint.
Great explanation of walking the board.
Thank you! Really glad you liked it. 👍
Wouldn't this model produce something similar to round robin? If an item is assigned to a single person and the team follows the pattern here described, each person would focus on creating a good story about the progress they have done and would fall into the same problem as round robin. Maybe some preparation is needed by the team members prior to the meeting? Maybe I'm getting something wrong? Still, I find this model amazing, and I think I will use it in my Daily Scrums. 😄
I thought this video was gonna be about doing daily stand-up comedy and why people are doing it wrong.
You just saved my life
Excellent!
Hi Gary.. I'm not able to download "Daily Stand-up Words of Wisdom" PDF. Please let me know if that has been removed for now.
May apologies - the link has now been fixed. You can find the Cheat Sheet here: www.developmentthatpays.com/cheatsheets/daily-standup-wisdom
So true. I can see this very often in our team. After giving their status some of our team members (including me sometimes) are paying more attention to their smartphone than to the currently speaking team member.
I've done it too!
Hi, how do you keep a log of progress day by day when walking the board? Who is logging the comments? And what if there are a lot of ticket items - how do you keep the stand up to 5 minutes? Thanks
Not sure this is a complete answer, but I'll have a go:
- How do you keep a log of progress day by day? The board itself is an indicator of progress.
- Who is logging the comments? In most cases, there's no need to log any comments. But there may be a need for individuals to meet immediately after standup to discuss items that arise.
- And what if there are a lot of ticket items - how do you keep the stand up to 5 minutes? (Standups are usually capped at 15 minutes.) Again, the board is helpful: by starting at the top right and working towards the left, the team talks about the most important items first.
What we're also doing wrong is calling it the (daily) standup instead of the daily scrum
Wow, my team started calling it daily scrum and we doubled our revenue. Thanks mate
There is no rule that says that you can not have a card with your 3 questions-answers as a guide for your intervention in the stand-up meeting, so in that way you can pay attention to all the team member's interventions without distractions because you know when is your turn you will have a card that will help you out with your intervention. Your video really does not have sense... and we ALWAYS add the name of the team member whos is responsible of the task/user story in the card over the Scrum Board, this is not new.
True, there is no rule that prevents it. But I've never seen such a card. Have you?