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Agile Software Development: How does a team have a daily standup with asynchronous schedules?

  • I'm a big believer in the daily standup - 7 minutes in which everybody updates everyone else and gets a chance to pitch in with advice about others' tasks. It's a pretty standard part of an Agile process. It also seems to me that the daily standup is most useful at the beginning of the day, when everybody has a chance to act on what they learn. If you can do it all face-to-face, that seems to add to the team too. But, at the same time, I'm really sensitive to the concept that not everyone naturally has the same working hours. For a night owl, requiring attendance at a beginning-of-the-day stand-up can both rob them of their most productive work hours, late at night, and get them up too early to have strong brain function. So how do you reconcile these two? How do I have standup at a good hour and more flexible work hours at the same time?

  • Answer:

    Do it before Lunch In "The Art Of Agile Planning" training course with Jim Shore and Diana Larsen, they recommend not doing standup meetings first thing in the morning.  The problem with early standups can be that people tend to wait around to start their day with that meeting.  And inevitably, people are late to work, which can screw up the whole thing.  Their preferred time is a little bit before lunch.  That makes sure everyone is around.  Plus it gives people time to prepare in the morning so they won't just sit there trying to recall what they did the day before.  The most important thing: it helps keep the meeting short.  Nobody wants to cut into lunch time! http://jamesshore.com/Training/

Rex Madden at Quora Visit the source

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Make your standup asynchronous. How? Use an instant messaging tool (e.g. Slack, HipChat, Skype, etc.). "Run the board" - i.e. track work movement. Be transparent - i.e. comment on cards on your kanban board, this will avoid having to have people literally stand up. There's no reason everyone needs to know the project/product status at a particular time, because if it was critical, there would be a mandatory time to do so (e.g. always in the morning). If... your team is not performing well. Then making them say the update themselves *may* make them more inclined to be productive. That's a whole other realm of culture failure and people psychology which we shouldn't get into. TLDR; Asynchronously communicate project updates in an IM tool and focus on project board changes and blockers, rather than a 'status' update - the work speaks for itself.

Gerry Claps

I had success planning a mini tournament of ping pong killer after. Do the standup then play 3 rounds of killer. (half your team at one end, half the team at the other) - one person serves then runs to join the line at the other end of the table while the person at the head of the opposite line returns the ball and runs..... If you miss you are out and game continues until you are down to 2 then a quick best of three balls for those 2 while everyone else eggs them on. so find a (fun) activity that everyone is able to do and enjoys doing (may be hard) and do it after -- no one missed a standup. Fussball / pool / whatever. Ideally something active that gets people moving and away from desks for a little bit. We timed ours for about 11am -- maybe its a UK think but that time is pretty traditional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevenses

Charles Gildawie

I've found that the asynchronous schedules are usually a consequence of a distributed or remote team. The reality there is that you'll likely never find a perfect time. Skipping the meeting but using a tool to collect and distribute the data (and value) of standup is an option that works for many teams (Google uses an internal tool called "snippets" for this.) Our firm productized the tool we use, Status Hero (https://statushero.com).

Henry Poydar

We deal with this having clients in different time zones and we simply have to negotiate a time that is a happy medium for everyone on the team. The communication between EVERYONE on the team that is provided by the stand up far outweighs it being perfectly timed for all team members. I think all you can do is make sure it isn't at a time that greatly inconveniences any one person or prevents member(s) of the team from participating.

Adam Lowe

we did it like this : there was dartboard on the wall, everyday at 10:00 alarm start ringing, everybody(including clients if present) stand up(whatever they were doing) and formed the circle and you know how it goes

Filip Tuhy

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