AGILE TRANSITION - Daily Stand-up Meeting

The Daily – the biggest change.

For the AGILECOACH, the Daily Stand-up Meeting is a decisive indicator for the success of AGILE. A successful Daily Stand-up Meeting should be so much fun that everyone involved looks forward to this daily event.

Every day, people look each other in the eye and have the most intensive contact with each other. The personal daily performance becomes transparent – this is a personal opening that should not be underestimated and, for many, one of the biggest changes from the traditional way of working. This change should be accompanied carefully. The daily stand-up meeting initially requires some practice:

15 minutes – no longer!

Meetings that last longer usually suffer in focus and efficiency. Moreover, there is a risk that not everyone involved will benefit directly from the discussion and withdraw. If the first person is missing, discipline is hard to maintain.

Therefore, it is important that this meeting lasts exactly 15 minutes if possible. This is just enough time for each individual to inform the others whether or not they can do what they have set out to do. 1. what have I planned? 2. what have I achieved? 3. where do I need help?

Helpful for this are, on the one hand, the so-called Agile clock with a clock face that shows 15 minutes and whose hands run backwards, a 3-minute hourglass for each individual’s speaking time, the Agile board and the AGILECOACH’s moderation.

The Post Daily.

If there is a need for further deepening, the team members agree on bilateral discussions for the time immediately afterwards. For this purpose, another 15 minutes were planned from the outset as a so-called “post-daily“. Only the people who are actually important for the solution remain here. The others have gained 15 minutes, which they can certainly put to good use.

Good feelings.

The AGILECOACH makes sure that everyone involved feels comfortable in this highly sensitive situation. If, for example, someone steps forward to the Agile board, removes the sticky from the Work in Progress column and sticks it in the Done column, then they have done something for the team community at that moment.
They have managed to implement what they set out to do. Everyone can see that. There was a risk that he might not succeed, that he might embarrass himself. You can see that he succeeded. In his posture, in his facial expression and in his charisma. It’s a good feeling – he wants to have that again.

The others in the team feel this moment and think: “Wow, that was really good! I’d like to stand like that one day!”.

And surely there is always the team member who takes on too much every day. Most of the time, he or she needs the most speaking time to explain why he or she couldn’t do something. This team member has two options: He takes on less and learns to assess himself better or he spends the remaining hours of the day until the next daily stand-up meeting more focused.

Not every distraction, every email, every request from a colleague or the many avoidance actions necessarily need to be attended to. With the perspective of gaining recognition every day in the Daily Stand-up Meeting in the team, the working hours of a day take on a new value.

If there is a lot of laughter here, it is a sure sign that AGILE is having an effect and the group is becoming a real team. To encourage this, the AGILECOACH moderates the meeting, especially in the initial phase of the introduction.

The “boss-free” zone.

A POT member is generally not present in the daily stand-up meeting. In exceptional cases, you can be allowed to act as a silent observer to find out the current status of the project or – if you have been explicitly invited – to provide support to the team.

The image of the “plaster on the mouth” helps as a guide for the observer. The mere presence changes the situation and the mood drastically. The daily is basically the team’s “intimate zone”. Anyone who comes here should be explicitly invited.

Reasons could be that it is good when a boss or POT wants to show interest, or that it was called because the team urgently needs support or information. Then AGILECOACH support is essential.

This is exactly where the biggest mistakes are made in practice!