Daily stand-up, as the name suggests, is a daily status meeting among all the members of an agile team. It not only provides a forum for regular updates but also brings the problems of team members into focus so that it can be quickly addressed. Daily stand-up is a must-do practice, no matter how an agile team is established regardless of its office location.
What is Daily Stand-up?
● A daily stand-up is a daily status meeting among all team members and it is held roughly for 15 minutes.
● Every member has to answer three important questions −
○ What I did yesterday?
○ What I’ll do today?
○ Any impediment I am facing…/ I am blocked due to…
● Daily stand-up is for status update, not for any discussion. For discussion, team members should schedule another meeting at a different time.
● Participants usually stand instead of sitting so that the meeting gets over quickly.
Why Stand-up is Important?
The benefits of having a daily stand-up in agile are as follows −
● The team can evaluate the progress on a daily basis and see if they can deliver as per the iteration plan.
● Each team member informs all about his/ her commitments for the day.
● It provides visibility to the team on any delay or obstacles.
Who Attends a Stand-up?
● The scrum master, the product owner, and the delivery team should attend the stand-up on a daily basis.
● Stakeholders and Customers are encouraged to attend the meeting and they can act as an observer, but they are not supposed to participate in stand-ups.
● It is the scrum master’s responsibility to take note of each team member’s queries and the problems they are facing.
Geographically Dispersed Teams
Stand-ups can be done in multiple ways, in case the agile team members are operating from different time zones −
● Select a member on a rotational basis, who can attend the stand-up meeting of teams located in different time zones.
● Have a separate stand-up per team, update the status of the stand-up in a tool such as Rally, SharePoint, Wikis, etc.
● Have a wide variety of communication tools ready like conference call, video conferencing, instant messengers, or any other third-party knowledge sharing tools.
