Standups are 15 minute daily meetings
that keep everyone in the know
and connected throughout the sprint.
They aren't long meetings where you get
into the details of plans or the status
of every single task, they're just quick,
informative, dare I say fun, check ins.
Hi, Megan Cook here, Group Product Manager
for Jira Software Cloud.
In our last series, we talked about sprint planning,
the scrum ceremony where your team meets
to discuss what you can deliver during
the upcoming sprint and how you'll deliver that work.
Once you've started your sprint,
you'll hold standups, or daily scrums,
that's where we'll pick up today.
In this episode, we'll cover the basics of standups,
what they are, when they happen,
who attends, and how to run them.
We'll also share a few tips for success.
Standups are 15 minute daily meetings
to quickly plan for the next 24 hours.
They keep everyone on the same page
and united as a team.
Sharing each person's successes and plans each day
gets everyone excited about the project overall,
and their individual contribution.
Standups also help eliminate other meetings,
identify blockers, make quick decisions,
and build a shared understanding of what
everyone is working on.
These meetings are typically done in the morning,
preferably at the same time and place,
and since they're so short, don't even bother
booking a conference room, just remember
to gather your development team,
your scrum master, and product owner in a common area
and have everyone stand up the whole time,
hence the name.
The reason we stand is to keep the high energy
and the conversation short.
Nobody wants to stand for a whole hour.
Now there are two common ways to do standups,
round robin and walking the board.
Let's start with round robin.
In this method, everyone goes around the circle
and shares their answers to three questions,
what did I work on yesterday?
What am I working on today?
And what is blocking me?
It's important to take turns and pay attention
to your teammates, some teams like to have
a token that each person holds as they talk
to emphasize that only one person
should be talking at a time.
However, when someone on the team
is talking about a blocker, others should be
encouraged to jump in and volunteer to help if they can.
There's also an implicit accountability
in reporting the work that you've completed
yesterday in front of your peers.
No one wants to be that person who's constantly
doing the same thing, or not making any progress.
Another common approach is called walking the board.
This is where your team walks through
all the work you have on your board,
who owns it, and if there are any blockers.
Move right to left through the board,
talking first about the pieces of work
that are closest to done, and how you can
work together to get those items shipped.
These aren't the only two ways to run a standup,
there are tons of variations and other methods,
we recommend doing what's best for you and your team,
whatever that may be.
Regardless of the method that you choose,
here are a few tips to help you make
your standups more productive and effective.
First, relegate all side conversations
to the sixteenth minute, or after the standup is over.
Allow anyone in the group to raise the flag
whenever the group is getting off topic,
or needs to move along.
Second, walk into the standup each day
knowing what you're going to say,
it keeps that energy high, and everyone engaged.
Also, make standups part of a larger scrum framework,
with sprint planning, sprint reviews,
and retrospectives to help you constantly improve
and get the right work done.
Speaking of constantly improving,
if something's not working, make a change,
don't be afraid to get creative
and adapt as things change, that's what scrum
and agile are all about.
So that's all for today's intro to standups,
but wait, there's more, follow our channel
to learn more about the other scrum ceremonies
to round out your practice and help make your teams
as efficient and effective as possible.