We have been using Scrum for a few months and I have never felt that I get a huge value out of the standup meeting. When I leave the standup, I want to feel like I know exactly where we’re at it in the sprint and that we are on top of the top priority tasks.
We do the standard three questions, but because we go person to person there is no real conversation as to where the actual user story stands since multiple people are working on it at the same time.
For the latest sprint, we have tried reversing the format and looking at each task in order of priority. Each person answers the three questions based on that task if they are working on it. This gives us a better feel for the current state of each task and ensures that we are working on the right things…
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of issue and have any better solutions?
What have seen working quite well:
1) Work with small team
3 to 5 persons is nice. Above 7, standing meeting does not work anymore.
2) You do a round of the “standard 3 questions”.
When one person is talking, other can answer and pairs can form at this moment. For instance I say “I will work on story A, and I want somebody to help me with Ruby on Rails”, and then another person can say “I will do that with you, right after the standup meeting”. When the turn comes to this other person, she will say “I did that… and I will work today with Bernard, as we just agreed”.
The main objective is to create pairs of persons who will work together on same tasks.
3) You then review the task board, ensuring you covered the main point during the standup meeting. You can maybe adjust what you said, if needed.
All this take about 15 minutes
Hope this help.