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Stand-up Meetings Should Not Be Status Meetings
No Blockers
I’ve been wondering, is there any difference between saying no blockers and saying no block?
If you’re saying anything different at your stand-up it’s all going a bit wrong. Let us explore why.
The failing Stand-up
I’ve been in software projects where the stand-up goes on for that little bit too long.
The easy-fix issues are
- Too many people in the team
- People talking about irrelevant issues (to most of the team) that need to be taken offline
These should be tackled at source, and most people have no real argument with this.
But there is a more difficult issue at play here.
The hard-to-fix issue
Many stand-up meetings have turned into status report meetings.
It’s a subtle distinction, but one that needs to be tackled in many workplaces that are not as agile as they would like to think they are.
The status
I’ve seen 3 questions asked in many places where I’ve worked.
- Progress from yesterday
- Plans for today
- Any issues
This doesn’t seem quite right. People become very defensive about the work that they have done, and what they are delivering in any particular sprint.
The reason for this is that we are often not operating in a true Agile environment.
To clarify why that might be, let’s take a look at what an Agile Scrum Meeting and a Status Meeting should be, and how they differ.
The Status Meeting
This focusses on progress and milestones. We want to find out whether assigned tasks are on schedule, and then put a plan of action into place to bring us back to our original timeline.
These meetings are often run by a project manager who is under pressure to deliver the project in a certain timescale.
The status tends to focus on individual contributions, and discussions around blockers can end up as a form of blame game.
