Stand-up meetings are an essential part of Agile project management but they can be difficult to facilitate especially in a remote setting.
Daily Scrum which is an example of a stand-up meeting is one of the Scrum events. These are short, time-boxed, daily sessions where members of the team share their progress toward the Sprint Goal, challenges, and plans for the day.
I happen to be one vocal opposition against lots and lots of meetings. My grouse isn’t with the meetings but my perception that a bulk of them in the end are draining and unproductive and feel like a waste of time.
If you need to hold meetings daily, then the least you can do is to make them productive and effective.
Holding these daily sessions can be challenging for collocated teams. How then do you facilitate effective daily stand-ups for remote Agile teams where you can’t even see each other?
Tips for Facilitating Effective Daily Stand-Ups for Remote Agile Teams
Here are a few tips that can be beneficial in helping you to run smooth and productive stand-ups for remote teams.
1. Keep it Short
There’s literally nobody who loves a long meeting. Long meetings are boring.
The Daily Scrum is time-boxed for a maximum of 15 minutes. Keep it that way. If you’re facilitating a stand-up and it’s exceeding this time, it will certainly lose its purpose and effectiveness.
Ensure that you start and end on time, and avoid unnecessary topics that are irrelevant to the purpose of the meeting.
Also, the meeting should be limited to just the core members of the team so that everyone has just enough time to talk about what’s relevant.
If any other stakeholder is to be in the meeting, it should be in an observatory mode and towards the end.
The initial idea of holding these daily sessions standing is to ensure it doesn’t stretch out as people wouldn’t want to stand for more than 15 minutes on average.
If there’s the need to discuss any other issue that is not relevant to the core of this session, then you should schedule a separate meeting for it.
2. Set Clear Expectations
When you’re facilitating remote daily stand-ups, it’s important that expectations are clearly set in order for them to be effective.
You should collectively agree on the time and format of the stand-up, and stick to them. It’s important also that ground rules are set to ensure everything goes smoothly.
Some of these rules may include muting microphones when not speaking, respecting each other’s time, and avoiding distractions.
You should clarify the purpose and goal of each stand-up, and what each team member should share.
A common framework to use is the Daily Scrum three questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you doing today?
- What are the obstacles or impediments?
3. Choose the Right Tools
It’s impossible to have a remote meeting without using tools for virtual communication and collaboration.
You need to choose the right tools that are reliable and easy to use by everyone for conferencing. It should allow you to see and hear and hear everyone and have the ability for participants to share their screens.
Another tool that will be needed is one for tracking and updating tasks. A digital Kanban board or project management software can be used for this.
Every member of the team needs to be able to use these tools and have access to them.
4. Focus on Action
When running remote stand-up meetings, it’s important that you keep the focus on action.
Remember, daily stand-up meetings are not intended for status updates or problem-solving. Rather, they’re meant to align your team on the project’s current state and identify and eliminate any roadblocks hindering progress.
So, during the meeting, pay close attention to what each team member is doing or planning to do to contribute to the sprint goal.
Also, be sure to follow up on any blockers or impediments that surface, assign someone to take charge of the issue, and establish a deadline for its resolution.
5. Engage Everyone
Another helpful tip for running effective remote stand-ups is to ensure that everyone on your team is engaged.
As the Scrum master, your primary responsibility is to facilitate, not lead or dominate the meeting.
Encourage all team members to actively participate by speaking up, asking questions, and providing feedback.
Additionally, keep a close eye on the team’s energy and mood, and use tactics like humor, praise, or icebreakers to maintain their motivation and connection.
Avoid interrupting, judging, or micromanaging the team, instead allow them to self-organize and solve their own problems.
6. Note the Problems instead of Solving Them
One major reason that a lot of meetings drag out and lose their purpose is trying to solve the problems that come up during the meeting.
When it comes to daily stand-ups, one of the questions is the obstacles and impediments faced. No matter how easy it seems to just provide a solution to the problem there, don’t.
The problems should be noted and followed up subsequently. This can be through emails or follow-up meetings.
7. Experiment and Improve
Agile is about experimentation, inspection, and adaptation. When facilitating remote stand-ups: be open to experimentation and improvement.
Don’t assume that what works for one team or project will automatically work for everyone.
Encourage feedback from your team, and use retrospectives or surveys to assess the effectiveness and satisfaction of your stand-up meetings.
Try out different tools, formats, or techniques and see what resonates best with your team and context.
Monitor your project metrics and outcomes and measure the impact of your stand-ups. Remember, continuous improvement is key to success.
In a Nutshell
Daily stand-ups are a significant part of the Agile process as it’s a tool that helps the team inspect and improve daily.
If it’s not fulfilling this purpose, then it’s a waste of time. It may seem like a little time but it’s important for the team to start off on the right path daily.
So your focus should always be on the effectiveness and quality of the Agile event. If you do follow these tips, then you should be able to achieve that even when working with a remote team.
