My friend and former colleague Jay Boehm, a Senior Development Manager and I frequently discuss issues we face when working on development teams. Jay has been particularly interested in the daily standup that gets a lot of exposure in Scrum and XP. I gave him my usual rant about how all good things on a project flow from good communication, and some pointers on holding a successful standup, such as:

• Keep it 15 minutes long
• Limit discussion to:
  • What I worked on since the last standup
  • What I plan to work on today
  • Any issues preventing me from doing my work
• Don’t use standups for employee evaluation

Jay reported back to me today:

We’ve been doing a daily stand up for about 3 weeks with my team, and I am really, really pleased with how it’s working out. I love how people talk afterwards and make plans to tackle problems. The shy ones on my team are starting to gain some confidence in their colleagues. It’s great. I’m becoming a convert.

I love hearing stories like that. Nice job Jay!