Daily stand ups, Sit or Stand?
Do you sit or stand during your daily stand ups? Have you ever tried an experiment to change from what you are doing now?
I just reread the manifest for agile (https://www.scrummanifesto.org/). There is no mention of daily stand up, less so if you should be sitting or standing. But I'll bet you've tried daily meetings to discuss progress towards the sprint goal (notice I tried hard not to say reporting status). During this, Are you sitting or standing?
I've been part of a few teams now which conduct their daily updates in various forms, in person, remote, sitting, standing, a mix of some people sitting some standing. Here are my observations.
Stand.
Simple, it is my experience, if you are in person, just stand up and do it. Stop bitching about it, stand, get it done and move onto the key work.
领英推荐
Pros. It's usually quicker cause people get tired after a while of standing. Subconsciously they want to get back to their desk, so they tend to be quicker in their discussions. Helps to emphasis why you are there (daily standup) and not to deviate into sidebar discussions. Helps the team to start on time, who wants to wait around standing for an extra 5m for nothing. Standing also reduces people getting comfortable and settling in for a long discussion about....something. It's ok to bond a bit during standups, I'm all for that! But to have the team discussing for 15m the merits of light sabers over phasers? The team is too comfortable at that point. It also encourages the team talk to each other, face to face and deal with each other on a human level, not as cog in machine reporting a status to the boss. It also encourages transparency which builds trust over time, which leads to tightening the team and bonding as a team in the long run.
Cons. Hmm you get tired of standing. Really? I can see one member of the team having an issue. Bad knees, back or something medical. Sure. But the whole team? I highly doubt it. You're not in there long enough? Yeah, that's the point! Might as well be comfortable. That's also the point, not to get too comfortable, get in and get out. You're there too early, might as well take a seat. Ok, sure, I can see this one. But are you always there so early you need to sit down to rest up before standup? You're remote? Hmmmm, ok, this one I can see, you're at home and have your camera on your laptop, fine you got me there.
I doubted the benefits of standing up during standups....but that was in the beginning, before seeing the flip side with a couple of teams which did sit down during standups. The difference in team dynamics, information shared, feelings of trust and kinship were very different between teams. Sure individual on the team can explain away some of the differences, but can you honestly say that?
Maybe it's time for an experiment on your team to try standing if you are sitting?
I make magical things. I lead with compassion. I believe in mystery. I try to make things better. Ex-Shopify, Ex-BlackBerry
2 年At some point, the event called the “Daily Scrum” (which is in fact prescribed in the Scrum Guide) became commonly known as the “Daily Stand Up”. I’m sure there are a bunch of reasons for that. In the end, I don’t think sit vs. stand matters. But I think the name does. The Scrum Guide reads “The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work.” And later, “The Developers can select whatever structure and techniques they want, as long as their Daily Scrum focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal and produces an actionable plan for the next day of work.” Did changing the name to something that focuses on how you do a thing “we stand up” vs. why we do a thing, make us forget the purpose of this event? I’ve seen an awful lot of “stand ups” that are clearly just about “getting this over with” and not at all about “what’s our plan”. If the title of the event reminds us what we’re doing (restarting play every day) are we more likely to focus on the plan aspect of this event? As for sit vs. stand, it doesn’t matter - experimenting is fine. Keep in mind that some people are physically unable to stand though.