The 5 Most Important Rules for a Flawless Stand-Up Meeting

In the application of the Agile methodology, Daily Stand-Up Meetings are a key element. In this article, we delve into their characteristics and rules, and give you some tips on how to best apply them.

What is a Stand-Up Meeting?

Stand-Up Meetings are the heart of an Agile project. During a Stand-up Meeting the most important information is shared and ‘roadblocks’ are removed, which is why they are essential to the success of the project.

What happens during these meetings? Each team member shares what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and all potential roadblocks for which they might need help to advance in their activities.

Stand-Up Meeting: The 5 Most Important Rules

1) They should last around 15 minutes (never more than 30 minutes): the Stand-Up Meeting should be short and to the point. Participants stand up, so that the meeting is fast, upbeat and active.

2) The Stand-Up Meeting is not the moment to solve problems: if there are problems they should be reported and discussed after the Stand-Up Meeting, and brought back to the group the following day.
This is probably the hardest habit to eliminate: problems should be handled after the meeting and should include only the necessary team members.

3) The Project Manager has an observer role, while the team has a leadership role: the Project Manager should look at problems that have not been solved and remove all roadblocks for the team. In addition, the PM should ensure that risk situations are correctly managed. After the Stand-Up Meeting, the Project Manager should communicate the status to key stakeholders so that they are informed of the Project’s progress.

4) Listen carefully: the Project Manager’s job during the “explore phase” is to protect and increase the productivity of each team member by letting them handle distractions that may slow down their work. If features are lagging behind, the PM has to find out why, make the necessary changes as quickly as possible, and take notes so that this information is included in the Project’s lessons learned.

Here are some things to look out for during daily meetings:

• Is the team collaborating or is there tension among team members?
  
• Are there risks that may have an impact on future sprints?
  
• Is there a common problem that you can help solve? (After the meeting of course!)

The Project Manager can gain useful information from Stand-Up Meetings, like the challenges that the team is facing everyday. This information can and should be used to take action when needed.

5) Ensure that issues are resolved in a timely manner: the issue register is the tool from which the PM can determine whether problems/issues are growing in volume.

Stand-Up Meeting: Essentials

All technical and business Team Members, the Project Manager and, in Scrum projects, the Scrum Master should participate in the Stand-Up Meeting.

The Stand-Up Meeting gives the PM the basis to maintain control of the Project: tracking progress on planned features for each sprint is the control mechanism.

Completed features are reported in Stand-Up Meetings, as well as on the feature board in the Team room, so that the whole Team can see the progress.

Daily Stand-Up Meeting: Tips

Change the presentation order every day: always changing the order adds energy to the meetings

• Assign to one person of the Team the role of ‘timekeeper’ to keep the group well focused. Allocating 30 to 60 seconds per person is sufficient.
• The timekeeper must change for each sprint
• Held the meeting at the same time each day
• Make sure that the meeting always ends on a positive note: have the team share the victories achieved since the last meeting. For example, was the last product review successful? Did a resource in the technical team manage to overcome a problem that the team is particularly proud of? Sharing wins is a great way to keep the mood high and show that progress is being made.

We have covered how a 15-minute meeting can be important and useful – now all that is left is to commit to making your Stand-Up Meetings focused, short and flawless!

If you are interested in discovering a Project Management methodology that combines the standards, rigour and transparency of traditional Project Management with the flexibility provided by Agile? Discover the AgilePM Methodology!