Indeed, to make a standup more straightforward we usually just fix 3 questions to everyone:
1. What are you working on?
2. Are you having any blockers?
3. What are you going to work on next?
In reality it's just about blockers and seeing the next direction.
No need to embellish or 'stuff' any of these responses. It was kind of natural when we used to have a real storyboard, the one with post-it stickies. So the standup would be a good time to move the stories to done or todo side.
Well, the whole idea kind of sputters when there're significant status disbalances on the team. For one, the dev members get into status-report mode, while the managers get into i'm-busy-with-important-meetings mode. For the other, it's harder for mangement members of a team to align their ways of staying busy with 'ant-like' activity of devs. Also in such context a 'blocker' suddenly signals a kind of a failure, lack of efficiency that has to be owned, instead of a usual work issue. Who wants to own a failure?Ironically, the management can be instrumental in resolving intra-dept blockers.
Any team is about mutual trust, so if the standup does not serve the needs of the whole team, I'd just reserve that time to those members that see a benefit from it. Find another way to interface with other members (mgmt?), maybe a questions queue or some briefs pipeline.
1. What are you working on?
2. Are you having any blockers?
3. What are you going to work on next?
In reality it's just about blockers and seeing the next direction.
No need to embellish or 'stuff' any of these responses. It was kind of natural when we used to have a real storyboard, the one with post-it stickies. So the standup would be a good time to move the stories to done or todo side.
Well, the whole idea kind of sputters when there're significant status disbalances on the team. For one, the dev members get into status-report mode, while the managers get into i'm-busy-with-important-meetings mode. For the other, it's harder for mangement members of a team to align their ways of staying busy with 'ant-like' activity of devs. Also in such context a 'blocker' suddenly signals a kind of a failure, lack of efficiency that has to be owned, instead of a usual work issue. Who wants to own a failure?Ironically, the management can be instrumental in resolving intra-dept blockers.
Any team is about mutual trust, so if the standup does not serve the needs of the whole team, I'd just reserve that time to those members that see a benefit from it. Find another way to interface with other members (mgmt?), maybe a questions queue or some briefs pipeline.