The horror of the standup

I hated standups when the team I was in started with Scrum. It was disruptive for my work, and we just answered the famous three questions and did nothing with it. It was just a status meeting. It was a daily chore that went fairly quick, so I thought it was more a coffee break than something useful. 

My standard answer each day was about the same:

• SM: "What did you do yesterday?"
• Me: "I worked on PBI x"
• SM: "What are you going to do today?"
• Me: "I'll be continuing my work on PBI x"
• SM: "Anything that impedes your work?"
• Me: "Nope"

This useless conversation made me resent Scrum. Until I actually opened the guide (when it was still more than the current 18 pages) and read about the purpose of the standup. It was not about those three questions, it is about making a plan for the day. It is about what the team is going to do in the next 24 hours to come closer to the sprint goal. It is a support meeting that promotes collaboration. Who is going to do what, to what purpose and who are helping each other to get things done. The questions are only there to support the definition of the daily goal, but are interpreted wrong. I guess that's why they removed the questions all together from the Scrum guide.

After this realisation I changed the way I do standups, they actually help me to get things done. I coach many teams and this is how I teach them to get more out of a standup.

1. Reorganise the board: the lanes are used for the PBIs. Don't order it by team members. But order it by PBIs with the most important ones on top, the least important ones on the bottom.
2. Make the columns as simple as possible: Todo, Doing, Done is more than enough.
3. Start at the first item that is not done and discuss with the team what can be done today to finish that item. Focus on making pairs to make sure the item is finished in the shortest time possible. At least two or three people should be working on the same PBI.
4. Check for anything that will impede progress on the PBI and make that the teams highest priority to solve.
5. Take the next item on the list until you run out of team members.

After changing a standup like this, I have found out that people value the standups more. Most of the time the standups took less than the allotted 15 minutes. And as a result the teams collaborate more, have better knowledge sharing, and they got more stuff done.