What is a stand up meeting and why do we need this? Let’s discuss how to start a project day efficiently. And not only this. Today I’m gonna share my
five ground rules on how to properly organize these stand up meetings.
Today we’re gonna talk about the stand up meetings. And I would like to touch base on what is that, why this tool is so much efficient. As I have mentioned, I have 5 rules to share with you on how do I usually organize these kind of meetings and how do I make them efficient. Now let’s dive in!
What a Stand Up Meeting is?
To begin with, let’s discuss what a stand up meeting is. Stand up meeting is a regular daily sync with a project team. Usually this kind of meeting is kept within the 15 minutes timeframe. This is done to avoid the extra time waste and to be able to discuss the very much relevant things about the certain project only. Of course, the time frame could very. However, while variance could be present, but better to keep it downward.
I bet you know about the stand up meetings. If you don’t, you’ve definitely heard about the daily scrums or daily meetings. Basically, all this is the same and all of them have the same purpose and the same goal.
Why do we need a Stand Up Meeting?
Many people think that daily meeting are called to report your current state and progress to management. That is not true. The goal of the meeting is to
bring up the current progress of your tasks, to discuss the critical issues with the team and to adjust yourself to the working mode. The key here is ‘with the team’, and I’ll tell you why.
As you know, projects are done by people. Usually there are several to many people involved. Having the same goal on the project we have all our tasks connected. That is why while you are working on your task the result of your task could impact the task your peer is working on. That is why it is extremely important to stay tuned, and to stay on the same page. And this is actually the general reason why do we discuss our progress and our current issues with our teammates.
As I have mentioned, projects are collaborative work. Daily stand up meetings help up to make this work even more efficient.
Reason #1
First, this kind of meeting give us a possibility to sync all together to get the current state and the clear picture of the current situation on the project all together.
Reason #2
Second, which is not less important, it helps adjusting our working pace so that you could get to the finish at the appropriate time with your peers.
Reason #3
Third, discussing the issues and problems of you current tasks with your colleagues will give them a chance to advice. They could propose how to properly fix those issues to be able to efficiently link your tasks all together in the very end.
By the way, I would like to know if you practice daily meetings on your projects?
How to Organize a Stand Up Meeting?
We have discussed what the daily stand up meeting are; why they are so much efficient and why it is a good move having those meetings on your projects. Now let’s move on and discuss how to efficiently organize this kind of meetings. I’m gonna share with you my five rules on how do I usually organize them.
Rule #1
Mornings.
Every day at the same time, so that it will become a habit finally. This means your team needs to know that every day. Let’s say, at 9am you are going to have a daily stand up meetings and they need to get prepared by that time. The same time and mornings are necessary to help your team to adjust themselves to the working day.
Rule #2
Content of those meetings.
It always should remain the same. Team needs to know what exactly they are going to prepare for the meetings every day. This is essential to avoid extra time loss. The team should respond to the following questions.
- What has been done yesterday?
- What is in progress now?
- What is gonna be done today?
- What issues or blockers do they have?
Rule #3
Sequence.
It is extremely important to keep the same sequence of actions on every meeting. The sequence of reporting should always remain the same. This means people should know who is going after who and when exactly they are going to get the floor to report on their progress, current state their plans for today and on the possible issues that they are facing now.
Rule #4
Concision.
This is extremely important. As you may remember, the goal of the meeting is to rapidly get all the information and to push everybody to work efficiently. Therefore, everything that is not related to the current meeting or to the current project should be taken off line. This could be individual questions or problems that require attention not necessarily from all of the team.
Rule #5
Meeting minutes.
It is always a good practice to record key points, action items and decisions made. Even on those daily 15-minutes meetings you could manage to apply adjustments to the project plan in general and to change the game.
Now you know my 5 rules of thumb on how do I organize daily stand up meetings. If you do have any other principles I would love to know them, so please share with me in comments.
Cheers!