Finding Value in Stand-up Meetings

How do stand-up meetings help? Are they really helpful?

Here at Ideyatech, we have been practicing stand-up meetings religiously ever since our first project. So far, this short, daily routine has kept everyone up-to-date on status of their projects. By reporting daily activities, issues and bottlenecks are quickly identified and resolved. Everyone gets accountability on the tasks that are reported, and the team becomes more responsible of the project as a whole.

Here are some tips to make stand-up meetings effective:

1. Be religious. Make it a daily habit.
2. Keep it short. Do not exceed 15 minutes.
3. Avoid autocracy. Let team members take responsibility and accountability.
4. Break long conversations. Take it offline and discuss after the meeting.
5. Use a small object as a token indicator of the current speaker. We use a ball, which occasionally brings some fun during meetings.

In addition, here are some common problems we encountered during our stand-up meetings:

1. Some members (especially the younger ones) tend to report to the project leader, instead of reporting to the team.
2. Some members wait for the stand-up meetings before bringing up their questions or issues.
3. Most of the time, the members report only their accomplishments, and tend to forget about the problems or their pending or next tasks.

At the end of the day, these stand-up meetings serve as a medium for communication between project members. For best results from these stand-up meetings, some procedures may need to be applied and laid out.