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F3 07 36 8F 75 D1 0F 19 1A 06 21 19 FA 0B 0D 17
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Follow up to the story-driven standup
I’ve had both positive and negative responses to my article on the story-driven standup. Recently I found the following post:
http://jroller.com/page/njain?entry=faqs_on_standup
Are standups another name for status report meeting?
The daily status meeting is meant to be an opportunity for the team members to report to the team on their progress and obstacles. If the team members are reporting to the Process Facilitator (or the Product Owner, or the project manager or the executive who just happens to join the meeting) then those people might change what they report and how they feel about the meeting. It will no longer be open nor useful to the other team members.Standup is the team‘s primary opportunity to self-organize. The outcome should be that the team has collectively agreed what to work on today, and what impediments they need their manager [Iteration manager/Scrum Master] to remove along the way.
If we think of the standup in-terms of “answering three questions“, it contributes to the difficulty of getting people away from reporting progress/status to the managers. Apparently words like “answer“ and “question” tend to be associated with ideas closer to being interrogated rather than communicating information.
Hence it is important to see the team members do not treat this as time to report progress to their boss. When answering these questions the team member should talk to the team and not to the manager.
The second to the last paragraph really highlights the reason I wrote the story-driven standup article. Answering the three questions consistently lead to status update meetings rather than a time for the team to organize its work for the day.
What makes Agile agile?
Many things have become associated with Agile. For some Agile is SCRUM, for others it’s Xtreme Programming. For others still it’s something else entirely. Agile has come to mean alot of things to alot of people. In this article I’ll describe what I think Agile is and why.
What is Agile?
What’s the defining characteristic of Agile? When you examine the many practices that have come to be associated with Agile you will find one overriding commonality. All these practices promote Feedback. This is, I believe, the defining characteristic of Agile. Agile is the idea of maximizing feedback so as to best respond to change. As such, I do not think of Agile as a set or even a family of practices or methodologies.
What isn’t Agile?
Having stated the above I do not consider any given practice or set of practices Agile (or agile). Any set of rules or methods will not nessesarily make you, your team or your company more agile. It’s very easy to subvert the practices of SCRUM and XP to provide emphasis on status updates (dailys, reviews, etc) and artifacts (burndown charts, etc); two common pitfalls of Agile. Changing what you do does not make you Agile; changing how you think does.
How do I become Agile?
Concentrate on maximizing feedback. There are many areas in which you can do this:
Individually - I’ve had alot of success using Test Driven Development as a tool to enhance feedback. When I add a new piece of code into the mix I can know right away if it broke something I’ve already written. The number of regressions on my team dropped dramaticly when I began using TDD.
Team - Story driven standups tell the team right away where the most important story is at and what it will take to get it done. This has been very valuable to my team. Additionally, it’s alot more fun than the boring narratives you hear in status driven standups!
Project - Iterative development cycles not only increase feedback to teams, stake-holders and customers but also reduce risk by keeping the product out in the open and on course. The length of the iteration is very specific to the needs of the project and can range from one to four weeks. It’s fun to see the product evolve from one iteration to the next.
I know there are many indivduals who disparage what they call “picking and choosing” practices. Fortunately I don’t have to be concerned with their opinions. What I do have to be concerned about is getting work done as quickly and cleanly as possible. If picking and choosing is how I have to do it then so be it. Becoming married to a particular method or practice seems contrary to the idea of being agile (or Agile). It may be better for you to roll your own method.
The story-driven standup
The following is just my observation on the nature of daily standup meetings in SCRUM. If my views offend anyone then I do apologize.
I’ve tried hard to find an existing article on this subject. The only reason I wrote this is that I could not find anything describing this style of daily standup meetings. If everyone already does this and I’m the only one just now “getting it” please let me know!
Everyone learns early on in SCRUM that the daily standup consists of three parts:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What will you do today?
- What’s in your way?
We all know these questions and they are well practiced. For many these questions are sufficient for daily team meetings. I have come to call this style of standup the Status-Driven standup. The problem I’ve encountered is that daily status updates do not necessarily contribute to a team effort to complete a story. Status updates have a tendency to be individual oriented rather than team oriented. As noted in many references on Agile and SCRUM a team is self organizing and self managing. Daily standups are not intended to prove a team is doing work, it is intended to facilitate team work. Status-driven standups tend to justify individual effort as opposed to facilitating team effort. Status-driven standups tend to keep individuals focused on “their work” rather than on the teams work.
What is a story-driven standup? Continue reading this entry »