Team Communications: Improving Your Daily Stand Up Performance

The Daily Stand Up Meeting is a staple of the Agile Methodology. It happens, obviously, on a daily basis, should have the entire team in attendance, and should provide insight into the team's progress through each team member giving their status.

When used properly, the Daily Stand Up Meeting can be a guard against your project going off the rails. When your team does not understand the underlying purposes of the Daily Stand Up Meeting, they will not be participating at the level expected to support great team communications. It can lead to un-met expectations, conflict, confusion, and "unexplained" reductions in velocity. And it can contribute to individual burn out.

So, lets take a moment to review the meaning of the Daily Stand Up Meeting and see if we can't provide some tips as to how to improve the effectiveness of the vital resource.

The Importance of the Daily Stand Up

Modern software development is a complicated process. The technology as ever-evolving as ever-challenging. Each project presents unique challenges, but one of the most difficult and important challenge is communication. Especially, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic; every team became a remote team, straining communications. Utilizing the Daily Stand Up Meeting properly can improve team communications.

Traditionally, each team member expresses the answer to three questions during the meeting:

1. What did I work on yesterday?
2. What am I working on today?
3. What issues are blocking me?

These questions are designed to allow team members to provide insight into each other's work. The answers are expected to be brief and concise. But the answers are also supposed to informative and helpful.

What's Wrong with These Questions? The Answers

There's nothing wrong with these questions, really, unless you do not understand how to best answer them. For instance, would you find these answers particularly helpful?

"Yesterday I worked on User Story 432187. Today I continued that work. I have no blockers."

Does everyone know what the work on User Story 432187 pertains to? Does it effect their own work? And if it does, after working on their on user stories all day, will another team member remember the importance of User Story 432187? Maybe?

It is not adequate, nor helpful, to answer these questions in this manner. Sure, it does answer the questions. So, lets talk about how to provide better answers.

Providing Answers with Context

It is your responsibility to bring context along with your status. No matter the size of your team, each team member is occupied with their own assigned work. Unless your work is directly related to the work they have been assigned, it is very doubtful every team member in the Daily Status Meeting will remember what work you were assigned. Even your Product Owner won't remember.

Providing context can be very simple and brief. For instance, saying:

"Yesterday, I continued work on the editing an order form on the orders screen. Today, I completed that work. I have no blockers."

What's missing? Firstly, the mention of user story number. While having access to that information may be necessary, providing it does not give a lot of context. Saying, as in the above example, the functionality and what screen that functionality is associated with provides the whole team the clarity of the current work.

You may not think this matters, but it does. Your work is associated to everything the team is doing. Assisting them with understanding --- not listening to, but understanding, quickly and efficiently --- your progress is your responsibility in the Daily Stand Up Meeting.

Providing Answers with Clarity

Like with providing context, providing clarity is also important. Let's update the status once more:

"Yesterday, I worked on creating the form for editing orders on the orders screen. Today, I completed this work by connecting the form to the service and updated the tests. I have created a pull request. I have no blockers."

Now the team knows that you made progress from yesterday's status. That you've got your work functioning properly, you've tested it, and you've created a pull request for that work. That is the kind of clarity required for a good status report.

Providing Answers with Transparency & Vulnerability

One of the main elements a status provides is transparency into your progress. This transparency is vital to identifying problems early and often. Let's update this status once again:

"Yesterday, I worked on creating the form for editing orders on the orders screen. Today, I had some difficulty connecting the form to the API endpoint because I was doing something stupid but I completed this work and updated the tests. I have created a pull request. I have no blockers."

I've added a little vulnerability with this new status with the "something stupid". While transparency is required within your status, providing some spice to the status can also be helpful to the team. No one is perfect. Hinting that you did something dumb reminds you and others that sometimes things happen. What is important and transparent here is that you prevailed. Absolutely no shame in that.

Providing Answers Celebrating Collaboration

While you are at it, lets celebrate some. Another update to the status:

"Yesterday, I worked on creating the form for editing orders on the orders screen. Today, I had some difficulty connecting the form to the API endpoint because I was doing something stupid, but I had a call with Ben and we figured it out. Thanks, Ben! I completed this work and updated the tests. I have created a pull request. I have no blockers."

Yes, team work makes the dream work, right? No man is an island? Credit where credit is due?

Letting your team know that you asked for help is very important. It reminds the team that they, too, can ask for help. Asking for assistance is not a weakness. It signals to your team that you found a problem and acted quickly to deal with it. Mentioning that you received that help provides the team cues as to the team health. This is very valuable feedback.

Providing Answers Concisely & Consistently

One of the things that make me a little crazy in a Daily Stand Up Meeting is hearing someone say "OK, um, uh... What did I do yesterday? Um..." That is not good. This means the person, at best, is distracted during the meeting. At worse, it means they have come to the meeting unprepared.

You may ask "It's a daily meeting. How could they be unprepared?" Sure, the day might get away from you. But, you need to come to the meeting prepared.

On my current team, we accompany our oral status with a written status in the meeting's chat. For me, this provides the opportunity organize my thoughts before the meeting and provides me with a teleprompter during the meeting to make my oral report more concise, something I with which I often have difficulty.

Becoming more prepared and practicing being concise will lead you to more consistency. This consistency allows you to provide your team with the confidence they need from you.

Providing Leadership By Example

The expectations for your team's Daily Stand Up Meeting should be documented in your Team Working Agreement so that everyone can review them from time to time to measure their performance.

Your team may not have a Team Working Agreement. That should not prevent you from applying the suggestions from this post to your status. Demonstrating these practices will not only provide your team insights into your current work, but also give them a model to work by. Practiced consistently, you can transform your Daily Stand Up Meeting into a transformative force reinforcing your team's communication performance.

Conclusion

Hopefully, the thoughts presented in this post can assist with illuminating the underlying purpose of the Daily Stand Up Meeting as well as provide you a path to improve your performance during that meeting.