Are your standups (aka Daily Scrums or Daily Kanbans) struggling to get past a status report? Do team members actually listen to each other or are they simply waiting to give their update? Do team members complain that this is a waste of time?
If any of those ring true, or if you’re simply looking for ways to improve daily planning and collaboration, give this technique a try!
The Real Purpose of Standups
I’m often surprised by the number of teams, Scrum Masters and even some Agile Coaches who don’t seem to understand the real purpose of the Standup. It’s not to answer the “3 questions”, more on that here. It’s not to get status on the work. Nor is it to ensure everyone on the team is “busy”. All of those are reflective of a Project Management mindset, making sure everyone is fully engaged all the time – maximizing resource utilization.
The goal of Standup, its main purpose, is to create a plan of attack for the day. How will the team self-organize to finish work-in-progress? What do they expect to complete today? (focus on finishing) Who needs to work with who? Who needs help on a particular item? How will the team coordinate to add value today?
The real purpose of the Standup is planning and coordination. A focus on delivering value as a team. It is an inspect & adapt conversation.
“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Dwight Eisenhower
As former U.S. President Eisenhower stated, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. While the daily plan you create at Standup may not survive throughout the day, the conversation & coordination, the act of planning, IS the Standup. That is indispensable.
Benefits of Effective Standups
A. Improved Communication and Collaboration
One of the primary benefits of an effective Standup is improved communication and collaboration among team members. By gathering together in a dedicated conversation, team members can share updates, exchange information, and clarify expectations of each other. This open and transparent communication fosters a sense of unity and helps prevent misunderstandings or duplication of effort.
The result of this conversation should be a shared understanding of the daily plan. Everyone has a plan of attack for the day.
B. Enhanced Team Delivery
A well-executed Standup can significantly enhance teamwork. By discussing progress and upcoming needs, team members gain a clear understanding of how they will contribute to team level value delivery.
This shared knowledge promotes efficiency, reduces bottlenecks, and enables the team to collaborate on delivery of the highest value work items.
C. Focus on Finishing
At the end of the standup, the team should have expectations on what will be finished today. This information can be useful to stakeholders and/or any downstream teams who may then accept the teams completed work items. Downstream teams, and how to incorporate more of the value stream into this team, is beyond the scope of this article.
Stop starting, start finishing.
Walking The Board Technique
Walking the Board is actually a simple technique. Start from the rightmost workflow state, just before “Done”. See the images below. All work items (stories, defects, spikes, etc) should be prioritized top-to-bottom within each state (column). So, the highest priority item for that state will always be at the top. Start there.
For each work item the facilitator will ask the team, or the team members will ask themselves, how they plan to finish, or continue to add value to, the work item. Members will coordinate with each other to move the item to, or closer to, completion.
The emphasis of the conversation is planning and coordinating efforts per work item. If you focus the conversation on individuals, as is typical in a status report, you will almost ensure they will continue to work individually and not as a team.
Once the topmost item in the rightmost state, before Done, is planned, the conversation will move to the item below it within that same state.
When there are no more items within that state, the facilitator will move to conversation to the left one state (column). Again, start at the top as the highest priority item within that state will be on the top.
Proceed until all items in progress are discussed. Only discuss items that have not yet been started if the team will be starting them today and have available capacity to do so.
Ensure WIP Limits are honored before beginning new work.
If you find that you skip over some work items because nothing is happening on them, or simply cannot get to all work items, inspect your WIP Limits. They might be set too high. Using Scrum but not limiting WIP? WIP Limits aren’t just for Kanban, consider using them!
“We succeed, or fail, as one.”
Coach Dave
Challenges and Mitigation Strategies
While Walking the Board offers numerous benefits, implementing this technique may come with challenges. Here are some common challenges and strategies to address them:
A. Resistance to change
Walking the Board standups may face resistance from team members accustomed to a different way of reporting, namely providing status. To address this, it is crucial to communicate the rationale behind discussing work items as a team. Demonstrating the positive impact on productivity and emphasizing the collaborative nature of Agile can help alleviate resistance.
B. Dealing with external dependencies
The team’s work may involve dependencies on external teams who may not be represented in the Standup. This may hinder the effectiveness of the daily plan. Team members with outside dependencies are encouraged to have coordination conversations before standup. Team members then bring the most up-to-date information to planning. Another method is to temporarily invite external team members to the Standup to set real-time expectations on dependent work.
Wrapping Up
Walking the Board is a highly effective Standup technique. It is leaps and bounds better than the 3 questions. It centers the conversation around teamwork and how the team will progress work. Nor will it generate a status report type standup unless you allow that to happen. Keep the focus on moving forward, not discussing how busy everyone was yesterday.
Each and every team I have taught this technique to showed improvement in collaboration and teamwork. They began to view items as “their” work, not “my” work and “your” work. Expand the team horizons!
If you liked this post and want to learn more about Agile, Lean or Leadership, please consider purchasing a book from my Recommended Reading page.
Until next time!
