4squareviews

In John Stenbeck’s book “PMI-ACP and Certified Scrum Professional Exam Prep and Desk Reference”, he creates an “agile project management process grid” which describes 87 processes used in agile project management.   These processes are divided into five process groups (Initiate, Plan, Iterate, Control, and Close), which are analogous to the five process groups in traditional project management, and seven knowledge areas which can be mapped, more or less, onto the ten knowledge areas in traditional project management.

I am now covering a block of two processes that relate to team communications which are done on a repeating basis during each iteration of the project.   The first process 6.7 covers several types of meetings:   Daily Stand-Up, Iteration Review, and Team Retrospective Meetings.   This post covers the first of these, the Daily Stand-Up Meeting.

The purpose of the daily stand-up meeting is primarily to synchronize the team members’ activities.   Secondarily, it provides information for documenting work progress against the iteration plan.

How is the meeting organized?

• Time duration:  15 minutes
• Facilitator:   Agile Project Manager, or Scrum Master
• Attendance:    Mandatory for every team member

Here are the three questions used to prompt and guide the meeting:

1. What have I done since the last daily meeting?
2. What  will I do between now and the next daily meeting?
3. What obstacles are impeding my work performance?

There are various methods of determining who goes first in the meeting, among which are the 911 method (those go first who have an emergency or impediment).

Here are the metrics for measuring how well a team meeting is going:

• Is every one on time?
• Does team focus on the work rather than personalities?
• Does the meeting begin and end on time?

Note that if an obstacle or impediment is identified, this is NOT the time for problem solving on ways to remove it.   That should be done  with a subset of the team breaking out to discuss the matter AFTER the daily meeting.

Many people think that agile is not as disciplined as waterfall, because it doesn’t require as much external documentation.    What they don’t understand is that it IS very disciplined, but the discipline comes not from external documentation, but INTERNAL discipline, the kind that is enforced by the discipline of the daily meeting.

The next post covers the Iteration Review Meeting.

Filed under: Uncategorized |