Mismanaged stand up meetings end up wasting time and killing productivity. If stand ups go too long and drawn out, people will stop paying attention. Here's how to have stand-up meetings correctly and efficiently so you can get most out of them as well as your team:
- Duration: Aim for 15 minutes maximum, the size of the team could make this longer or shorter. There are a few exceptions, but remember that this meeting is to deliver a status not a debugging session or a time to hash out a feature request with a stakeholder.
- Format: Each developer, designer or attendee answers three questions:
- What did you accomplish yesterday?
- What are you working on today?
- Are there any blockers? If yes, who can help you or what needs to be done to unblock you. Take those discussions off to another meeting.
- Timing: Start on time. Nag people who are late with a Slack or Teams message. I'm late to meetings all the time because I'm in a flow working on a task so a nudge from someone always helps me break out and get to the meeting.
- Focus: Identify blockers, don't solve them. Schedule separate discussions for complex issues or anything that falls outside the three questions.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- The focus should be on team coordination, removing blockers and aligning the team, not reporting progress to upper management, gathering requirements or trying to figure out a bug.
- Problem-solving or debugging sessions: The other people on the call who are not connected to the problem will be unnecessarily tied up during these sessions. This is a waste of time for them, take it offline to a new meeting.
- Allowing tangents: People love to talk. They love to talk about topics they care about. Stay on topic. Park discussions for later.
Implementation
- Communicate the format clearly to everyone. If planning sessions start to creep up, remind the team to take this offline.
- Enforce the rules consistently across the team. No exceptions for senior staff or management. Everyone follows the same rules.
- Review and adjust as needed. This is a process to feel out the team and create your own dynamic.
Expected Outcomes
- Increased developer, designer and team member productivity.
- Everyone on the team is involved and paying attention.
- Improved team communication between everyone on the team.
- Faster identification and resolution of blockers.
- More time for actual work.
Stand-ups are tools to get things done and make sure everyone is on the same page. They should enable work, not hinder it. If your stand-ups aren't boosting productivity, you're doing them wrong and it's time to fix something.