I'm an observer/nonparticipant in daily scrum meetings that our Development team has. Each of the programmers, in turn, describe their progress yesterday, what they're going to do today, and what roadblocks they're encountering. It's a 15 minute meeting, no one is permitted to sit (to make sure it goes fast), and only the developers and the team lead are permitted to speak (unless they ask a non-team member a question).
I like how this focuses on day-to-day tactical plans and supports communication among the team. What's been people's experience doing this type of meeting outside of a programming environment?
chuck
Question about team meetings
Chuck,
Stand up meetings are very efficient. Michigan University once did a study to show decisions are made 30% faster in stand-up meetings and without a negative impact on the quality of the decision.
Question about team meetings
I've direct experience in NON sw dev teams (but always in the IT space) and IT SIMPLY WORKS!
Ciao,
PierG
Question about team meetings
My work group began having stand-up meetings once a week about a year ago. At the time, there were only 4 people in the group only 4 people at the meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to share what everyone was working on to the extent that it might impact another group member. Yesterday, there were 11 people at the meeting and it took nearly an hour as everyone read and explained their "to-do" list perhaps trying to prove how busy they are.
Based on the experience yesterday, the group has decided move the meeting to a conference room and decrease the frequency. Because I am not the manager of the group my ability to effect a change in the consensus is limited, however does anyone have suggestions for preempting this sort of scope creep in stand-up meetings? I can see this snowballing into a tremendous time-waster.
Question about team meetings
My suggestions:
. no one MUST interrupt. No excuses.
. fixed time for each person: use a timer (for ex. the one you might use cooking)
. everyone has to answer to a defined and fixed seto of questions as a guideline for his timeslot
Talk about these principles and try to find public agreement.
PierG
Question about team meetings
HOME RUN!!!
These are my favorite meetings. Stand up and deliver and go home. Start the first one on time, be ruthless on ending on time, and everyone will show up and contribute gladly.
If folks want to stick around after, fine, but if you're chairing, just end it and let others go if they need to.
These WORK.
Mark