Stand-up meetings have become a sacred ritual for teams using Agile in any form. They are fantastic for keeping a company aligned and focused in the same direction. Although implementing them is not difficult, making the most of these Agile daily standups with your colleagues requires practice and nonetheless, experimentation.
Over the course of the past few years, at Kanbanize, we have managed to gain a lot of experience regarding this subject. It is only fair to share with those in need our knowledge and provide you with stand-up meeting best practices and ideas that have worked particularly well for us.
Stick to the end to:
- Learn what is a stand-up meeting and what makes it important;
- Get some proven tips for enhancing them;
- Review a few mistakes that you must avoid at all cost;
- The benefits your team will see.
What Is a Stand-up Meeting?
In Agile, a stand-up meeting (or a "standing meeting") is a short meeting between a team that is held on foot. The goal is to go over important tasks that have been finished, are in progress, or are about to be started.
It is also known as daily stand-up or daily Kanban to teams practicing the Kanban method, due to the recurring cadence of the meeting.
Initially, the daily stand-up meetings originated in Scrum but were quickly adopted by teams using various frameworks and methods related to Agile.
They are very typical for software development teams but are gaining popularity in other fields of work such as marketing, project management, product development, and many others as well. This is because holding a short stand-up meeting provides a fresh and, most of all, effective alternative to typical round-table meetings that are dreaded by a large portion of the current workforce.
In fact, research published by MIT Sloan shows that meetings have increased in length and frequency over the past 50 years to the point where executives spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in them, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s.
The problem, however, is not only with the length of these meetings but also with the fact that they can easily go off course, even if there is a solid agenda set upfront. This results in wasting time and energy and, nonetheless, reduced workflow capacity.
5 Common Rules to Run a Daily Stan-Up Meeting
The stand-up meeting is meant to be a more efficient substitution for a team's round-up meeting. When conducting it, you should keep the meeting concise and straight on point. This is quite easier to achieve compared to traditional meetings because standing for long periods of time creates a feeling of discomfort.
Kanbanize Tip #1: To put it in a specific time frame, we advise you to aim for a length of 10 minutes, but anything between 5 and 15 minutes is perfectly fine.
Rule 1: Pick a Recurring Time and Stick to It
To begin with, select a recurring time for the daily stand-up meeting that is convenient for each person that is supposed to attend. We advise you to schedule it soon after the beginning of the workday. This will allow you to sync your plan for the day and avoid mistakes caused by a lack of communication.
Rule 2: Choose a Stand-up Meeting Format
At the beginning of the meeting, gather around your Kanban board. Here you need to understand that there are 2 typical approaches to the stand-up meeting format:
- Focusing on the process - more popular in Kanban;
- Focusing on the people - widely adopted with other Agile methodologies.
If you want to focus on the team during the daily meeting, each person, with no exception, must be able to answer 3 fundamental questions regarding their workflow:
- What did I accomplish yesterday?
- What will I do today?
- What obstacles, if any, are impeding my progress?
Please have in mind that this way of holding a stand-up meeting is effective for teams that are not visualizing their workflow. In the presence of a Kanban board, explaining what you have done the previous day is not necessary as each task's assignee is visible, and the value of this approach to daily stand-ups is reduced.
If you choose the process-focused way of doing a daily Kanban, you need to put attention not so much on what was done the previous day but rather on what's slowing down items that have been in progress for the longest amount of time. Put special attention to blocked cards and discuss how you can deal with any progress impediments. Maybe even take action to tighten the WIP limits on your process to reduce context switching.
Kanbanize #2: Whether you are using Kanban or not, we advise you to focus on the process instead of the people. This way, you'll make sure that progress is actually being made because, as we all know, being busy and being productive can be very different things.
Rule 3: Participation Is Required for Everyone
It is important that all stakeholders participate, even if there are remote employees scattered across the globe. Be sure to have this in mind when choosing the time for the stand-up.
Rule 4: Be Punctual
Everybody must understand that the stand-up meeting doesn't wait for anyone. For example, if you schedule it for 9:15 am, you should start at this very minute. Do not tolerate being late and develop a stimulus mechanism to motivate your team to be on time.
A while ago, we changed the time of the marketing team's daily stand-up. Due to the fact that it was pulled 20 minutes ahead, a problem quickly arose. Every day, in the course of a couple of weeks, somebody was entering the meeting late.
This brought tension between the team and we decided to take a rather drastic measure to fix the problem at hand. We agreed that whenever somebody comes in late, the meeting will be moved one minute ahead permanently.
Although you may think this is quite harsh, it brought immediate results. Nobody wanted the stand-up to start earlier and nobody wanted to harm the rest of the team. Since this measure was taken, we've moved the Kanban daily stand-up just 2 minutes ahead.
Another less stressful stimulus would be for the person who's late to buy coffee for the whole team the next day or do something else in everybody's favor to make up for not arriving on time.
Here it is important to say that you risk creating a safe environment for being late if the team thinks that they can buy their way out of being punctual. The best you can do is try to find a balance between the carrot and the stick.
Rule 5: Determine the Order of Speaking
To begin with, you need to determine who starts speaking first. A commonly adopted practice is for the last person entering the meeting to have the honor.
In case this seems a little rough, you can start presenting clockwise or counterclockwise using the board as the 12 o'clock indicator. And of course, you may just keep this unregulated and allow anyone to start the meeting.
There are quite a few stand-up best practices and ideas to determine the order of speaking at the meeting, including:
- Round robin - the next person on the left/right has to continue;
- Passing the baton - the person who is done presenting passes a sacred item (we used a plush hedgehog) to a teammate of their choice, and that person has to continue;
- Workflow state - go over the board and start with the Kanban cards that are furthest to the right, usually done or close to being finished. Respectively each card's owner must talk about it.
Each of these stand-up ideas is viable, although if the people participating are nearing 10 people or even surpassing this number, passing the baton might not be a wise choice because somebody may easily be forgotten. Also, we would like to stress out that the third option is by far the most valuable to Kanban practitioners.
Kanbanize Tip #3: To consider the daily stand-up meeting successful, your team should engage in conversation about tackling the tasks at hand after the end.
5 Best Stand-up Meeting Practices to Try Right Now
If you put to practice everything that you've read about to this point in the article, you will be able to see an immediate positive effect from your daily Kanban. The following paragraphs contain stand-up ideas that we've implemented at some point in Kanbanize and have enhanced the value we get.
1. Schedule the Meeting at a Strange Time
When scheduling the daily Kanban, it is a good idea to choose an unconventional time. For example, our RnD team meets at 9:18 AM; marketing at 9:52; customer success at 10:08, etc.
By scheduling it for a strange time, you will make it more memorable. Even better, allow your team to suggest the time for the meeting when preparing to apply this Agile ritual for the very first time.
2. Raise the Alarm
At the very beginning of my journey at Kanbanize, the marketing team had an alarm that started ringing a minute before the actual time of the stand-up. To give the stand-up meeting a positive connotation, we suggest you choose either a cheerful tone/song or some iconic music from a movie. A good example would be Queen's all-time hit "We will rock you".
Another way to put this stand-up idea to practice would to just set up a calendar notification to pop up just before the meeting. This way you can avoid the risk of annoying other colleagues working nearby or remind the teammate who's always working with their headphones on that it's time to go.
Even better, set up an alarm to indicate that 15 minutes have passed since the start of the meeting. It will serve as a timekeeper and will help you become more concise when presenting information during the stand-up.
3. Gather Small Teams
Running a 10-minute daily Kanban with 15 people would be quite the challenge and you would have a hard time getting any value out of it. Keep your meetings focused based on activity and break them down whenever a team grows too large.
When we were outgrowing the startup level, we drastically expanded our business unit. By this moment our marketing, sales and customer success teams were gathering for a joint stand-up. With a growing number of people attending, the efficiency of the daily kanban dropped significantly.
Soon after, we broke it down into 2 separate meetings and the situation changed immediately for the better. Since then we've made numerous experiments, sometimes even mixing teams based on specific projects that we were doing.
Kanbanize Tip #4: From our experience, the most effective daily stand-up meetings consist of 3 to 8 people.
Of course, everybody is welcome to these meetings as a spectator when they want to learn what a unit is doing, but they need to keep their questions for the end of the meeting.
4. Start with a Physical Activity
Nothing can get you as pumped up for the day ahead as an actual pump. This is a stand-up idea picked up from our founders, who always start their daily stand-up meeting with a set of 20 pushups before going over their Portfolio Kanban board containing company-wide initiatives.
We suggest you choose some easy exercise like jumping jacks or squats and keep in mind the shape of your team when selecting the number of reps they should do. :)
5. Start According to Priority
When starting the stand-up, we've found out that the best way to keep the team looking in the same direction is to discuss the items with the highest priority first. Our Kanban boards are split into two types of workflows:
- Team Initiatives
- Tasks
Shortly explained, team initiatives represent projects or Agile epicswhich are then broken down into multiple tasks and linked together. When holding the meeting, we always talk about the initiatives and only mention individual tasks that we've done if they're not linked to an initiative but were with higher priority.
A good example of that would be when an expedite card arrives on our development team's board and they have to leave anything else to fix the problem ASAP.
By going only through the initiatives, you will be able to stay up to date with progress on the truly important activities and not get distracted by insignificant personal tasks, which are an inevitable part of the workday.
4 Mistakes to Avoid For an Effective Stand-up Meeting
So far, we have covered plenty of good practices, but of course, there are such that you'd better avoid if you want to have a positive experience from your daily stand-up meeting.
1. Don't Turn It into a Status Report
This is by far the most significant mistake you can make. Your goal is to keep the team aligned, not report status to whoever's in charge in the room (executive, manager, lead, etc.).
Avoid detailed explanations about each card (task) and stop team members that do so, in a polite way, of course.
As mentioned earlier, the daily stand-up in Kanban can be considered successful if teammates engage in a discussion after the meeting, not during.
2. Give the Daily Stand-Up Meeting a Positive Connotation
At first, stand-ups may seem intimidating, especially for introverted people.
Even though team members should be comfortable talking to each other, when having to discuss their work publicly with the whole team, including the manager, some people can become really nervous.
Avoid judging and giving negative feedback publicly during the meeting. Remember, positive feedback has the greatest effect when given in front of everyone, negative feedback can harm people's reputation, morale, and self-confidence greatly in the same situation.
3. Avoid Sharing Non-Relevant Information
As mentioned earlier, the daily stand-up in Kanban can be considered successful if teammates engage in a discussion after the meeting, not during. Any questions or problems that need a more profound investigation and are unrelated to most participants should be further discussed afterward. Going into discussions that do not concern the entire team increases the chances of losing teammates' focus and missing essential updates.
4. Sitting Down
Last but not least, remember why the meeting is called a stand-up. It's not uncommon for some teams to actually hold their stand-ups while sitting down comfortably around a table.
This is a mistake because you lose one of the most important advantages of stand-up meetings - the fact that they are short and on point, so team members can quickly go back to their actual work without switching context.
Remember why you are switching to this type of daily meeting and if necessary, remove all the chairs from the room where you are gathering each day.
What Are the Benefits of Holding a Daily Stand-Up Meeting?
By the end of this article, we hope you have gathered a few action items for your own team. If you manage to apply them to your stand-up meetings, you are most likely to experience the full package of advantages these daily meetings come with. Let's go over the benefits your team will see.
Workload Alignment and Transparency
Keeping everyone in the loop is essential for the success of the work being done and for delivering the value your clients deserve. Thanks to the daily stand-up meeting, your teammates can sync work progress and any updates that will affect the course of the work while being on track with the company's objectives and goals.
Identify Work Roadblocks
In addition to the benefits above, stand-up meetings are the right place for addressing any obstacles that are blocking the progress of the work. It is during that time to be discussed potential solutions, and everyone should feel open to sharing any ideas.
Better Teamwork and Collaboration
This 5 to 15 min day team gathering is crucial for building a cohesive team. It is even more important for remote teams and team members that may feel disconnected from the rest of the company. Beyond sharing work-related news, these meetings improve teams' connection and work efficiency.
Respond to Changes Faster
Meeting regularly allows team members not only to give an update on their work but also to keep them posted on any unpredictable events to projects without disrupting the work process with drastic changes. Having to know what is going on with the status of projects allows teams to respond quickly and adapt to new conditions.
Stand-up Meeting Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What Is a Stand-up Meeting in Agile?
In Agile, a stand-up meeting is a short meeting between team members who gather daily to discuss the most critical current business matters. It is required that this meeting is no longer than 15 min and is held standing up in front of a visual board.
2. What Is the Purpose of a Stand-up Meeting?
The goal of running a stand-up meeting is to go through the tasks that have been finished, are still in progress, or are about to be started. The purpose of this exercise is to address any impediments in the process and find potential ways to overcome them, as well as new opportunities for work improvements. Furthermore, meeting daily improves team collaboration, affecting the team's overall performance and work efficiency.
3. What Is a Scrum Meeting vs. Stand-up?
By Scrum meeting, we refer to various meetings a Scrum team holds, including the daily stand-up meeting. In practice, it's almost the same as the Daily Kanban meeting. The only difference is that a Scrum Master facilitates the meeting, and each team member should be able to answer these questions:
"What did I do yesterday?"
"What am I going to do today?"
"Is there something blocking my progress?"
In Conclusion
The stand-up meeting is one of the most popular and widely spread Agile practices. It can help you achieve better alignment between your teammates and keep everyone focused in the same direction.
Stand-up meetings can provide relief from the long round-table gatherings with questionable value and improve communication across your whole company. Although they might seem quite simple to implement, there's a lot more to them than meets the eye.
Pavel Naydenov
Head of Marketing
Passionate about online marketing, copywriting, brand management, and social media. Enthusiastic about cooking, guitar playing, and continuous improvement.
