The daily standup is changing…
A couple of team mates recently proposed to move to an asynchronous daily standup via our Slack channel. A few lines written anytime would keep us informed just as well as meeting in person. Moreover, a few plugins and whole business models are capitalizing on this idea. I am not against these concept for the specific cases where they make sense. Yet there I was, surprised to read — as if to reinforce the point of not meeting — that standups in person were already under question with our chapter being a few weeks old.
Why not post our daily standup on our channel? It’s easy and we can do it whenever we want… we don’t lose time, you get our status, there’s no need to listen to each other, really…
Except there is. Something was wrong, not with their individual goals, but with their team mindset. Never mind, a complaint is a gift. I decided it was a blessing that this issue surfaced early.
Meeting in person improves communication
The daily standup, or any kind of status meeting for that matter, does not exist to give status to the team lead. The daily standup exists so that the team can coordinate efforts, each within their own role. The team lead is important because part of his role is to remove impediments for the team to work effectively, but he is certainly not the only one in need of information. A designer facing a tough challenge would do well to share his problem, another designer with unexpected time on his hands would gladly assist. A team member sharing a fresh user insight may just be what another needed to drive a concept in a better direction. These kind of interactions also remove impediments yet do not require a team lead, they require team spirit. As a team lead, it is within your role to spark team spirit. Lots of it.
With this attitude, the usual Yesterday Today Obstacles can be restated as:
- What I did for my project or my chapter since yesterday’s standup
- Impediments I need assistance with
- What I will accomplish today
Can all of this happen online? If people truly care, sure. But if the current mentality is that the team gives status to the team lead, taking it online will only make things worse. If team mates do not listen to each other when they meet, they will not read each other when hiding behind a pixel curtain.
Even when the team cares, why dismiss the full spectrum of our communication if you can afford it? Body language and tone of voice play an important part in any conversation. If you are co-located, meet. Unless you want to hide, because…
Meeting in person makes you accountable
Again, the point is not only to give status to the team lead, but to all team members. Listening to and comparing what others accomplished yesterday helps you reflect on your own performance. If you are lagging behind, what are others doing that you could incorporate in your process? If you are the front runner, is there anything you could share that may help others? Instead of hiding, we can all be transparent and progress as a team. You see, it is easier to surpass yourself when you have a goal in front of you. The second position has a psychological advantage compared to the first who has to carve the path and find goals. I want to encourage self betterment, so I give time to try out this option before taking direct action.
Meeting in person may reduce meetings
Whether your daily standup is an open venue or a team only affair, there are cases where it makes sense to invite other people to the meeting. A new coordinator facilitating alignment for a few projects involving our chapter is attending, keeping us informed of business decisions while she follows design progress as reported by designers themselves. Thanks to this and other meetings I attend myself, a UX/UI designer is freed up of all project meetings as we provide him feedback continuously. All in 15 minutes, we can discuss details later.
It feels good to start together
Our chapter meets every morning at 9h45. With flexible hours, those coming to the office earlier have time to check email and catch up. I am the last one to arrive. I greet my team, we exchange hellos and smiles before we know how the day will go. We are positive. We gather in a room or huddle around coffee and take turns to share our progress. As I am experimenting with pairing — more on this later — I look for advancement as a pair. Hearing about a project, I encourage a UX designer to check with a concept designer for untapped synergies. I report my own status last, I share work in progress as a designer as well as management duties. By now, they know how important my meetings are by how sharp I come dressed that day. I finish by mentioning any free time I have to co-create, review, and validate. Hands raise and my schedule is full. We are ready for a new day.
Teamwork may be part of the human experience, but trust and allegiance need nurturing. It is very difficult to create team spirit if the team members do not relate to each other. When I think of truly amazing teams, I think of firefighters, paramedics, lifeguards, elite special forces… People facing challenging obstacles with fluid, trained precision, winning together and sharing the credit. These teams spend a lot of time together. It is not a coincidence, it is by design.
Let me give you another example. One of my contracts for a startup had the product owners and design team in Belgium while the entire development team worked remotely from Ukraine. We could not meet physically, but we made it a requirement to meet in person via Google Hangouts and a kick-ass panoramic camera. Online, but always in sync. We met at 9h30 and admittedly, we were lucky that the timezone difference was only 1 hour. We were an awesome team, it just worked.
Giving up meeting in person when the possibility exists is the same as giving up on the team altogether. Yes, there are distributed teams that do it, yet they still meet for retreats, hackathons, events… It was great to meet our Ukrainian devs for a few days in person rather than on camera, spend time together aside from work, connect on a human level. Given the opportunity, there is no reason for a team not to co-locate and meet. Embrace proximity.
Oh, and yes, we still meet in person :)