1) What is the daily standup in an agile process?
A short team meeting conducted on a daily basis (Usually before starting the day) to know the task or work status of the team members. The focus of the meeting should be the each team member completed the yesterday’s task and have occupied for an entire day with tasks. The meeting should have bound within the time frame of maximum 15 min. Maximum all or at least two members should have available to hold the standup. The thumb-rule of the standup meeting is no long discussions, no arguments and no Q&A sessions, but to the point talks within time frame. The roadblocks or discussions should have taken offline with the respective/concern person or with the team.
2) How daily standup is useful to the project?
Benefits of standup-
1. All the team follows the same time to start the work.
2. Easy to plan the work of each resource.
3. Easy to track the occupancy or bandwidth of the resource.
4. Help to locate the roadblocks if any.
5. Help to track progress of the project as per the schedule.
6. Handling multiple project properly get easier at a time.
7. Easy to prioritize the work as per the delivery timelines.
9. Able to achieve the target within timelines of the project.
10. Early detection of the problems or issues which can lead to achieve in time delivery of the project with good quality.
3) What is format of daily stand-up in an agile process?
In the daily standup each member should speak to the point. The major points to be covered in the daily standup can be as follows-
1. If the team members are on time for the meeting
2. What did a resource do yesterday?
3. What will be the plan for today?
4. Is there any roadblocks to complete the today’s task? (The answer will be in Yes/No)
4) Is there any rules, regulations for daily standup
1. The standup should have scheduled for specific time and place
2. The meeting should start on time as scheduled
3. All team members should present at the meeting.
4. The meeting should have a time frame of max. 15 mins
5. No long discussions are allowed in the meeting
6. The team member should have prepared with the points about what did they do yesterday and what is the plan for today for the meeting?
7. The roadblocks should have raised only in the meeting and the discussions on them should have taken offline with concern person.
5) Some sample questions could be covered in the standup meeting with answers?
1. Is the meeting started on time?(Yes/No)
2. Is the resources/member on time For Meeting in Morning? (Yes/No)
3. What did you do yesterday and status of the yesterday’s task? (Brief answers- usually one liners)
4. What is the task for the day? (Brief answers- usually one liners)
5. Are you fully allocated today? (Yes/No)
6. Any roadblocks to achieving today’s task? (Yes/No)
6) Who is responsible to run daily standup?
The team members who are agree to conduct the daily standup are the responsible for the meeting. It is no one’s particular responsibility to conduct the meeting or no one will monitor the same.
The members should not skip the meeting if any team member is not present or not attending the meeting. So the daily standup can be conducted even if at least two team members are present.
7) The major tools in use to manage the daily standup meetings-
It is important to maintain the transparency within the team related to the work and task. To maintain the same teams can use the tools to maintain the details of the daily standup meeting, which can be accessible to all related team members. Maintaining the details of the standup meeting at one place will help managers to overview the team’s availability and to track if the project is on schedule. The major tools can be used to maintain the details are-
a. Google Docs
b. Microsoft teams
c. Microsoft OneDrive
d. Skype
e. Slack
f. JIRA
8) Things which we can avoid in daily standup.
1. Time should be not exceed more than 15 mins for the standup meeting
2. Avoid discussions related to the task
3. Avoid resource allocation in the meeting
4. Avoid task management in detail at the meeting
5. Avoid technical discussion or problem solving discussions
6. Avoid addressing roadblocks in the meeting, this should be taken offline with the concern person.
7. The team members are not prepared for the meeting
8. Avoid late coming for the standup by the team members
9. Avoid detailing of the task while updating the status of yesterday’s and today’s task
10. Everyone should be clear about rules and expectations set for the standup meeting
