how to make your daily stand-up more engaging

How to make your daily stand-up more engaging?Boris KazarezMarch 2017

Agile Marathon (Google campus, Tel-Aviv)

About me

Boris Kazarez Developing software since the age of 13. Agile development fan since 2004. Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master (PSM III). Development Manager and Agile coach at iMDsoft. Married +2

What is your process?

a. Scrum

b. Kanban

c. XP

d. Mix

e. Waterfall

Daily Scrum vs Daily Standup

How not to turn your Daily Standup into “Zombie Daily Standup”?

Gamification?

What is the purpose of your Daily Standup?

Daily Standup

It is a planning meeting for the next 24 hours!

What is the right question?

How can you make the planning more effective?

Focus on your (Sprint) Goal!

How can we do that exactly?

Let’s first make sure we all speak the same language?

What is Scrum?

a. An Agile software development methodology.

b. A framework for developing complex products.

c. A software project management methodology for iterative software development.

“Scrum is a framework for developing and sustaining complex products.”

The Scrum Guide™

What is Kanban?

a. A project management methodology that originated from Toyota.

b. A Lean product development process.

c. A Lean software development methodology.

d. A method for continuous improvement.

“Kanban is a method for defining, managing and improving services that deliver knowledge work”

Essential Kanban Condensed

“Kanban is not a software development lifecycle methodology or an approach to project management.”“Kanban must not be thought of as a software development lifecycle process or a project-management process. Kanban is a change-management technique …”

-David Anderson

A few words about Kanban

Thanks to Andy Carmichael and David J Anderson, Essential Kanban Condensed

Scrum + Kanban

Both Scrum and Kanban come from TPS.

In Kanban we start with what we do NOW and evolve incrementally (so we can start with Scrum).

A good way to help Scrum improve is to bring in some Kanban practices, things that Scrum had forgotten...

What can be really helpful?

Limiting WiP.

Visualizing user stories (PBIs) value stream.

Make policies explicit.

Manage flow.

Visualize “work” (not tasks)

Limit your WiP Limiting WIP is often the first step to shift the emphasis

from starting to finishing.

By limiting the work-in-progress, we allow our teams to focus,working at a sustainable pace with quality output.

Limit your WiP

(2)

(3)

(2)

(2) (2

)(5)

Make all policies explicit It is hard to make improvements if every team member has a

different standard.

An example can be a DoD per column before moving work forward (checklists, ground rules).

Reduce the PBI/story size

Larger items take more time to process More queues (extra WiP) More variability

Slice smaller vertical user stories (PBIs) up to 3 days to get DONE!

More opportunities to inspect and adapt on a daily basis

Let’s mix all the ingredients…

Daily Standup What did I do yesterday? What I’m doing today? Is there anything blocking me?

Daily Standup with Kanban

1. “Walk the board” from right to left

2. Ask the probing questions to identify issues

and decide on next steps

Daily probing questions1. Is any of our work hidden?2. Are the next user stories blocked in some way (not refined, have impediments)?3. Are there user stories that we can unblock?4. Which user stories are moving slowly?5. Are there any bottlenecks in the queues (WiP is exceeded)?6. Is there a demand for backlog refinement (grooming)?7. Are we clear about what's next?8. Are we doing everything we can to minimize waiting time?9. Are there any queues that we can clean-up (swarm)?10. Are we respecting our WiP limits?11. Is anyone assigned too many tasks?12. Should we act on user stories owned by absent team members?

Thanks to Brendan Wovchko, Huge I/O

1. Is any of our work hidden?

2. Are the next user stories blocked in some way (not refined, have impediments)?

3. Are there user stories that we can unblock?

4. Which user stories are moving slowly?

5. Are there any bottlenecks in the queues (WiP is exceeded)?

6. Is there a demand for backlog refinement (grooming)?

7. Are we clear about what's next?

8. Are we doing everything we can to minimize waiting time?

9. Are there any queues that we can clean-up (swarm)?

10. Are we respecting our WiP limits?

11. Is anyone assigned too many tasks?

12. Should we act on user stories owned by absent team members?

The game One team member observes the daily stand-up from a side.

If s/he is able to identify a problem that others didn’t notice – s/he wins!

Thanks to Brendan Wovchko, Huge I/O

Wrapping up… Focus on how the team can move the work forward by using

probing questions

Discuss daily how to achieve the Sprint goal

Turn it into an effective planning meeting

And use a physical board

Questions?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/boriskazarez/