zenbiz.devinhedge.com

In my last three positions I keep running across a common theme: Developers/Engineers not understanding the purpose of the Daily Stand-Up. As a result, the Daily Stand-Up always turned into a waste of valuable resource time and twice turned the team into mush as the first thing in the morning (a time that should be buzzing with hyper-caffeinated energy) into what amounted to an interment ceremony.

So how do you make the Daily Stand-Up valuable again? I always started back at the beginning with the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and an article by ThoughtWorks’ Jason Yip titled “It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meeting” on Martin Fowler’s website.

Searching around I found others who have run into the same dilemma. Ed Gibb’s blog suggests the reason for a daily stand-up is to sync up. I agree. Kevin Rutherford has suggested it be a physical activity: not just standing around reading spreadsheets, but people taking turns marking on status boards. I agree with that, too. Jason Yip also has been to reiterate how Mike Cohn emphasizes that Daily Scrums are about more about commitment than update status. I think commitment is the crux of the matter.

Commitment is one of the core principles behind what makes a team successful. As much as we don’t like to admit that we are Superhuman Programmers and thus need a team: we do. With people come all of the things programmers don’t do well: human interaction. So it you want a successful team, my bet is that you will have to build a team of committed individuals that have a personality that fits your team’s culture. How do you do that? Get the right people on the bus, says Jim Collins. He should know. He wrote the book on it. In my last three positions, Jim’s research was reinforced over and over again. First figure out WHO should be on the team, THEN figure out what they are going to do. Create the culture that will espouse the level of commitment to be create great products and be zealously prejudiced against any team member that doesn’t fit that culture… even if that means helping that team member leave.