(c) 2004-2010 Esther Derby

Self-organizing teams don’t just organize the technical work. They make technical (and non-technical) decisions. Not every situation requires facilitation, but when a team faces an important decision, applying facilitation skills to the problem saves time and yields better results.

Jason was frustrated. The Release 6.0 team had been chewing on a major design decision for two weeks. Jason knew they had to make a decision or they’d run out of time to pursue any option. Jason pulled the five other team members together and told them they weren?t leaving the room without a decision.

Jason started restating the option that Sara had put forward last week.

“I don’t see how that?s going to work,” Josh said.

“Well, I don’t hear you coming up with any better ideas,” said Sara.

“We could go back to the idea Alan suggested last week,” offered Jen.

“Look, we?ve been going back and forth between two ideas, and we’re no closer to a decision now than we were two weeks ago.” Jason sighed and looked around at the rest of the team members seated at the conference table. “You guys got any other ideas?”

Alan and Keith shook their heads. Jen shrugged.

“Fine. We’ll go with Sara’s idea,” Jason said. “We need to move forward or we’ll miss the market window for Release 6.0 completely.”

The Release 6.0 team filed out of the conference room. None of them really liked the idea–not even Sara. But after two weeks of rehashing two competing ideas, the team was tired of talking.

Like the Release 6.0 team, many groups struggle with decisions. Some groups pounce on the first plausible idea only to find out later that they’re down a rat hole. Other groups discuss and argue endlessly and never reach a decision. Still others choose by default or let the loudest voice decide.

In order to make timely decisions that the group can support, teams need to be able to:

When I see teams who argue endlessly, can’t decide, or pick an option no one supports, one (or more) of these elements is missing.

There are dozens of techniques and methods that can help teams reach decisions. Here are three that will help with decisions that require broad support and buy-in. I’ve chosen these methods because I’ve seen teams use them successfully without extensive facilitation skills or a great deal of practice.

Generating Ideas

There’s no shortage of good ideas in the world. But sometimes, when people are under pressure, ideas are elusive. Many teams generate one or two alternatives and then stop. That’s not enough. Teams need at least three alternatives to have a real choice. Plus, thinking of three alternatives helps the group explore the problem.

Consider using a combination of brain writing and affinity clustering to generate many ideas in a short period of time. [1] Pairing these two techniques allows the group to integrate ideas and find common threads. Traditional brainstorming results in a laundry list of ideas and favors the people who are most vocal. This technique includes individual work, so people who need a bit of quiet time to think can participate fully.

Here’s how it works:

Write down the problem the group is trying to solve in the form of a question and post it where everyone can see. This question will help the group focus their thinking. Here are some examples from groups I’ve worked with.

“What are the risks of implementing the foo feature without backward compatibility?”

“What are ways that we can increase throughput in the amortization function?”

“How can we effectively test the risk areas of the product with our current hardware resources?”

“What are practical ways we can improve communication on the team?”

“What are the most important values we hold as a team?”

Allow 5-10 minutes for individuals to write down their own ideas. Ask for at least ten ideas. When the time is up, form groups of three or four to share individual lists. Have the small groups identify the best ideas and write them on sticky notes. There are bound to be duplicates between groups, but don?t worry–duplicates show where there is common ground.

Using a wall or a whiteboard, post the ideas and cluster them into affinity groups. Don’t start with a set of categories; allow the categories to emerge from the ideas. As people move the ideas into affinity groups, they’ll talk about how ideas are related, which are distinct, and how they fit together. These conversations help the team learn about each other’s ideas. When the affinity clusters are settled, name each cluster. The name represents the group’s agreement on the underlying ideas in each cluster.

Brainstorming and clustering will generate 5-7 alternatives in about 30-40 minutes. Sometimes the alternatives warrant further development before the team evaluates them. Organize small working teams to flesh out just enough detail to permit an assessment.

Narrowing Options

When I see a team stuck evaluating alternatives, it’s usually for one of two reasons: 1) People don?t have a common definition of the options under discussion, or 2) the group is talking about all the options at the same time.

To ensure that everyone is working from the same definition, write the key points of each alternative on a flip chart and post it where everyone can see it during the evaluation step. Review each alternative and clarify as needed before starting the evaluation.

Overcoming the second problem takes some discipline: Evaluate each option on its own before comparing options to each other.

You can do this by drawing two lines on a piece of flip-chart paper, creating three columns. List the “plusses” and “minuses” of the options in the first two columns. Make a note of what’s interesting about the option in the third column. Answer all three questions for one alternative before moving on to the next.

After the group has completed this activity for all the options, it’s usually obvious that some of the ideas are unsuitable.

Agreeing On an Option

An individual making a decision may agonize over it, but when more than one person is involved, it can turn into an argument. Teams need a way to test their agreement, discuss concerns, and arrive at a decision that all can support.

The Romans indicated their will in the gladiator’s arena with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. A modern modification of Roman voting helps teams arrive at a decision.

Thumbs up = I support this proposal.

Thumbs sideways = I’ll go along with the will of the group.

Thumbs down = I do not support this proposal and wish to speak.

If all thumbs are down, eliminate the option. On a mixed vote, listen to what the thumbs-down people have to say, and re-check agreement. Be cautious about choosing an option if the majority are thumbs sideways: This option has only lukewarm support.

This technique generates consensus. Consensus doesn’t necessarily mean complete unanimity. Consensus means that everyone must be willing to support the idea, even if it’s not his personal first choice.

Sooner or later, you’ll have a situation where one person withholds support for any option. Manage this situation before it happens. At the start of the consensus process, set a time limit:

“We’ll work really hard to reach consensus until the end of this meeting. If we don’t have agreement by that time, we will

turn the decision over to _________, or

take a vote, or

__________ (a technical expert, coach, manager) will decide.”

Most people don’t hold out to be obstinate; they are responding to a deeply held value or belief. Often the lone holdout will move on, but not at the cost of relinquishing an important belief. Respect the belief, use your fallback decision-making method, and move forward. However, when a group seldom reaches consensus, but instead relies on voting or deferring to authority, it’s a sign there are deeper issues at play.

Putting the Techniques to Work

When the Release 6.0 team held their project retrospective, the team identified decision-making as an area they wanted to improve. Of course, not every decision requires a formal process; but when important decisions come along, the team saves time and energy by applying techniques like the ones I’ve described.

If you notice your teams are stuck in one (or more) of the three decision areas, point out what you’re observing. Ask the team if they are willing to try something different to help reach a decision. Then hand them a copy of this article and try the appropriate technique. Teams who learn to self-facilitate spend less time churning and more time on the business of the business.

[1] Adapted from the Technology of Participation methods, The Institute of Cultural Affairs www.ica-usa.org

convert this post to pdf.

©2009 Steven M. Smith, www.stevenMsmith.com

Virginia Satir developed this method for discovering a group’s temperature — what we in technology often call the system’s state.

A facilitator leads the discovery. He or she keeps the group focused on each agenda item; works with the group members to help them communicate information congruently; and publicly displays each contribution so the group can review the temperature data throughout the meeting.

The temperature reading consists of five items in the following sequence: 1) Appreciations, 2) New Information, 3) Puzzles, 4) Complaint with Recommendation, 5) Hopes and Wishes.

Appreciations (past)

The first item focuses the group on the positive aspects of past experiences between the members of the group.

A model for an appreciation is –

“________ (person’s name), I appreciate you for ________ (doing some specific thing).”

For example, “Don, I appreciate you for creating the annotated bibliography in the handout about personality types. It’s cool and I feel it increases the value of our handout.”

Amplify the power of an appreciation by standing face-to-face with the recipient and looking into their eyes while appreciating them.

New Information (now)

Group members may learn, within minutes of a temperature reading, news that will affect how the group sees itself . This agenda item provides an opportunity to share news so everyone has the most up to date information, which may eliminate someone’s puzzle or complaint, which prevents needless processing of them in the next two agenda items.

For instance, “Food will be served at the banquet tonight (Sunday) from 7:30?9:30pm. That time is later than previous years.”

This item is also an opportunity to alert the group to foreseeable interruptions. For instance, “My father is in the hospital and I’m expecting a call from the doctor to update me on his status. When the doctor calls, I’ll step out of the meeting for a few minutes to take his call. My (meeting) buddy will update me on what transpired while I was gone.”

Puzzles (now)

This agenda item is an opportunity to share something that is puzzling a member; for instance, “I’m puzzled about whether I’ll be charged for using the Internet connection in my room.” Note, you won’t be charged; Internet usage is complimentary for the people who registered in the AYE block.”

The facilitator is responsible for preventing people from using a puzzle as a vehicle to make a complaint. Complaints are the subject of the next agenda item so the facilitator will ask an individual whose puzzle sounds like a complain to restate it during the next agenda item.

Complaint with Recommendation (now)

After puzzles are noted, the next agenda item is an opportunity to share a complaint and make a recommendation for eliminating the complaint. A recommendations is vital for preventing other members from feeling burdened to solve the complaint so — carefully note — complaints without recommendations are NOT allowed.

For instance, during last year’s tutorial, a tutorial participant said, “I won’t be able to remember the specifics about each agenda item in the temperature reading. I recommend that you provide more information about each item in the handout.”

Hopes and Wishes (future)

An opportunity for members to share with each other what they would like to have happen in the future. For instance, “I hope the members of my triad stay in touch throughout the conference.”

Final Thoughts

A temperature reading is about uncovering the state of a group: It isn’t about solving a puzzle or deciding whether to accept a recommendation. Use those discoveries to schedule separate meetings to solve problems and make decisions.

The success of this method depends on how safe members feel about sharing information. The safer people feel, the richer and deeper the information they will provide. Part of the facilitator’s role is to foster a safe environment where members feel safe to share what they know and how they feel.

I advise against altering the sequence of the agenda items. The sequence is carefully designed to move the group from past to present to future.

I prefer a rapid fire method for gathering people’s contribution so the reading is completed in 25?35 minutes.

I typically ask people to raise their hand if they have a contribution; create a stack of contributors; and process each person’s contribution. Processing name stacks enables me to keep the meeting within the expected duration. How? I monitor the time carefully and if we are consuming it too rapidly, I stop at the end of a name stack and move to the next agenda item.

Regardless of the methods used to collect the information, I believe you will find that a temperature reading is an effective method for revealing the state of a group to its members.

convert this post to pdf.

© 2003 Johanna Rothman, www.jrothman.com

Meetings are a fact of our lives. Most of the time we don’t need a facilitator to help move our meeting along; we can manage to accomplish the goals of the meeting without a formal facilitator. However, there are times when a facilitator makes sense.

Darcy is a middle manager in a startup. They have enough money for the next eight months. For the last three months, the senior managers have closeted themselves in meetings day in, day out. Darcy knows they’re trying to define the current strategy and tactics to accomplish the goal: drive enough revenue to break even. If they can break even in eight months, their investors will consider investing just a bit more to overcome the slow economy and the company will succeed. If they can’t break even, they’ll be shut down.

Darcy’s no dummy. Neither are the other people in the company. They all know what these closed-door meetings mean. Darcy is concerned that if the senior management team can’t figure out what they’re going to do soon, the meetings will turn into layoff-decision meetings.

Darcy’s management team needs a little facilitation to help them overcome their inability to come to a decision and move forward to specific tactics and action items.

Senior management teams aren’t the only groups who become stuck and need help making decisions. Sometimes, a technical group has the same problem. Desmond, a database developer has on ongoing discussion with George, the GUI developer, and Tina, the tester about how to appropriately design the database upgrade for their product. Desmond, George, and Tina all agree they need an upgrade. They can’t decide how the upgrade should work. Depending on how they choose to implement the upgrade, their work will change, as well as the work the users will have to accomplish. Each of them has different ideas, and each idea is valid. They can’t come to a decision, and they have only a week left to decide.

In both of these cases, well-meaning, intelligent people are stuck. Their normal ways of managing their disagreements are not working.

Consider choosing a facilitator under these conditions:

• When a group has trouble coming to agreement on a strategy or set of actions.
• When you want to be part of the discussion and decision-making. It’s not possible to treat the group fairly if you want to participate and facilitate.
• When you want to explore a previous project (retrospective facilitator) or explore alternatives (meeting facilitator)

You may be able to use people inside your organization as facilitators. Sometimes HR people or others are trained as facilitators. If you’re not part of the problem context or solution, you can facilitate the decision-making.

Whatever you do, choose when you require a facilitator. Don’t let the problems or conflicts escalate into no decisions, especially when you require a timely decision.

convert this post to pdf.

©2007 Steven M Smith

What does it say about the participants of a weekly meeting when the meeting consistently starts 5-10 minutes behind schedule?

Answer, the participants are cooperating with each other to start late.

Starting late is the status quo.

Let’s explore:

1. Are you cooperating with the participants of your meetings
   to start late?
2. How do you feel about that?
3. How do you feel about feeling that way?

Let me share how I would have answered the questions in 1990:

1. Yes, I have cooperated with others to start late
2. I feel powerless to change the status quo
3. I feel angry about feeling powerless

I have never liked feeling angry. But I felt powerless to change the status quo so what could I do about the situation?

I had more power than I first thought. I took a deep breath. I decided to arrive before the scheduled start time. I encouraged other participants to arrive early. I worked to become a meeting leader; and, when I became a leader, I demanded that people arrive on time.

Arriving early and encouraging other participants was successful at bringing more people into the room before the scheduled start time. Becoming a meeting leader and demanding that meetings start on time was a failure.

Despite my embarrassment, let me share just five of the many interventions I tried as a meeting leader to cause meetings to start on time:

• Rescheduling the meeting to a start time all participants agreed
  would work
• Contracting with the participants to arrive on schedule
• Locking the door to the room at the scheduled start time
• Cancelling meetings when an agreed upon quorum wasn’t present
• Publishing the names of the late arrivers in the meeting minutes

After gaining feedback from these interventions, I realized that successfully starting the meeting with all of the participants required the cooperation of, surprise, all the participants. The decision about whether we started on time was theirs to make.

Rather than fighting the status quo, I thought, “Why not make the status quo visible so every participant can decide for themselves whether it is acceptable?”

So Agenda Item #1 for all my meetings became Wait for people who arrive late. All the agenda items in my agenda have durations. I assign the duration for item #1 as the difference between the actual start time and scheduled start time of the previous meeting.

The agenda item looks like following:

#1. Wait for people who arrive late. 10 minutes

Regardless of why the status quo existed, its existence is out there for everyone to see.

What happened?

Reactions varied: Some participants didn’t react to the agenda item. They seemed to think it signaled nothing. Some participants commented that they thought the agenda item started the meeting out on a sour note and wanted it eliminated. And some participants thought starting late was unacceptable and they wanted to do something about it.

It’s easy to sense which reaction creates an opportunity to change the status quo.

Agenda Item #1 offers the opportunity for people to choose whether they want to continue the status quo or start changing it. I wish I could tell you agenda item #1 always triggered a change that caused a meeting I led to start on time. It didn’t. It does, however, always offer an opportunity for the participants to choose again. And sometime that’s all that’s need to trigger the change process that creates a new, more effective status quo.

You may be wondering, Does starting meetings on time truly matter? I believe it does. If people are the organs of an organization, then meetings are the organization’s lifeblood. These gatherings are where people come to define, solve and status problems. The more healthy a meeting, the more healthy the organization. And, conversely, the sicker the meetings, the sicker the organization.

If the people who participate in a meeting can’t cooperate to start their meeting on time, what chance is there they will cooperate to start a project on time? I you were a member of a relay team running a race against another team, would you agree that everyone on the team can arrive for the race whenever it fits for them?

The same people who participate in meeting are the same people who are responsible for the tasks in a project. A meeting is nothing but the simplest of projects. My experience is that attitudes of participants at meetings mirror their attitudes to their task work and the project as a whole. How could they not?

How healthy are your meetings? If they are sick, gaining cooperation about starting on time and actually starting on time will make them healthier. It’s not easy to change the status quo, but it can be changed.

convert this post to pdf.

©2005 Steven M Smith

He is wearing his traditional garb — dark suit, white button down shirt, red tie, and black tasseled shoes. The glare off his wire rimmed glasses makes it difficult to see those steely blue eyes. Harry Fox has all the right moves and his quick climb up the management ladder proves it. He is arrogant and ruthless. People who oppose his ideas pay a price. And the payment is extracted when they can least afford it.

We are both participating in a problem solving meeting. Well that’s not quite true, I’m observing and Harry is talking. He just stole the floor from Jim King a few minutes ago by talking louder than Jim. I hate this bully. Harry is dictating his ideas about how the team should solve the problem. But he is wrong. He has missed some crucial facts.

Should I share the facts? Wait a minute. Harry doesn’t care about facts; he cares about looking and sounding good. Harry is connected all the way to the top of the company. I’m connected to the people on my team. I hesitate. Wow, that’s totally uncharacteristic of me: I am known as someone who speaks his mind. I look over at Harry. He has taken his glasses off and is moving them rhythmically up and down as he talks. Although what he is saying doesn’t make sense, it sounds authoritative. Damn, I feel my gut twisting. Is it anger? No… It’s fear.

Harry wraps up his talk. There is a pause. If I want to speak, it’s time. I say nothing.

Safety

The omission of crucial facts and opinions happens in thousands of business meetings every day. If people don’t feel safe, they aren’t going to say anything. And you will have no idea about what you missed.

Too often the participants whose opinions count the most assume that the other members of the meeting feel as safe as they do. This assumption is wrong more often than not. But it is rarely ever tested.

You can help increase the safety of your meeting. Collect data. Share it. Interpret it. And decide how to respond to it. These actions will open the opportunity to transform your meetings. For instance, the opportunity to discuss and take action on previously undiscussable items, such as who was or wasn’t invited; what is and isn’t on the agenda; and how the discussions will or won’t be processed. I’ve experienced the power of this kind of transformation many times. You can too.

Collect the Data

Inform everyone that you will use a secret ballot to poll the participants about safety. Poll people with the following question, “How safe is it for you to fully share your ideas during this meeting?”

Write this question on the board or a flip chart. Clarify that the ballots are not identified, just a number on a slip of paper. Expand on what “fully share” means by listing some controversial ideas that weren’t shared at other meetings that would have made a difference.

An unsafe environment causes participants to share fewer ideas and to carefully filter the ideas that they do share to be sure they’re safe. Poll for the information in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A gradient of safety

Pass out a ballot — a small piece of paper, post-it note or note card — to each participant. Ask everyone to write either the number 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 that corresponds to their level of safety onto the ballot. My experience is that some people will, regardless of the instructions, write a decimal number. Simplify things for yourself by informing everyone that all the ballots will be rounded so that the results fit the range of the gradient.

Ask them to cup the ballot in their hand so that no other participant can see their rating. Stress to everyone that you don’t want anyone to share their rating with anyone else, regardless of how safe they personally feel. Again, emphasize that only you will see their ratings. Have the participants fold the ballot in half and place it in a container, such as a hat.

Share the Data

Ask a participant to help you build a histogram of the poll. I suggest that you use a flipchart so that have a hard copy of the histogram to use when your write up the minutes of the meeting. Pull each ballot out of the container one-by-one and read the score to the person building the histogram. Stuff the recorded ballot into one of your pockets or put them in your briefcase so no one else can or will ever see it. Note, you are not only revealing how safe people feel — you are also building safety by checking in a way that reinforces safety.

Figure 2 shows an actual histogram built during a requirements gathering meeting that I facilitated at a large manufacturing company.

Figure 2. The histogram of an actual safety check that was built during a requirements gathering meeting. How do the participants who feel completely safe help the participants who feel threatened?

Interpret the Data

Ask the participants, “What is your interpretation of the histogram?” A manager in the requirements gather meeting told all the other participants that they needed to start trusting each other. His management colleagues vigorously echoed his belief. And his colleagues had a lot more to say about the importance of trusting each other. I let this discussion continue for 10 minutes and asked, “What cluster of people on the histogram do you think is offering the most advice?” The room fell silent. The people who felt the safest realized that they were doing the most talking. And they realized that the people who felt threatened weren’t talking.

Telling people how they should feel doesn’t work. And, in my experience, people know that as a fact but forget to put that knowledge to work. It helps to give them a gentle reminder. Ask everyone, “How do the participants who feel completely safe help the participants who feel threatened?” The answers I have heard in meeting after meeting can be summarized in two words: 1) Care and 2) Listen.

During the manufacturing meeting, people did start to care and listen. The participants slowed down and asked each other questions. And, most importantly, they were okay with moments when no one spoke. I believe that silence is a gift. It shows people that you are ready and want to listen. And, in the case of a meeting, silence demonstrates that the group is ready and wants to listen.

These changes made a big difference in the requirements meeting. The discussions were deeper. And the enriched conversation enabled them to discover requirements that would have been invisible to them. They were more effective together than they had ever been.

Other Methods

Another method that can help create safety, especially in large groups, is to let the participants build the safety guidelines for their meeting.

Split the participants into small groups. The ideal size is a triad — 3 participants. Ask the groups to 1) introduce themselves to each other, and 2) create a set of guidelines for conducting a safe meeting. Give them a few test cases to ponder. For instance, someone starts blaming someone else, someone tells an inappropriate joke, someone dominates the meeting, and so on. Let everyone know that they shouldn’t limit themselves to the test cases. You want them to share any guideline that will make the meeting safer.

The hope is that the discussion will help remind people of what they already ready know about safety and remind them to practice what they know. And, just as importantly, the hope is that a connection with a small, manageable number of people will increase safety.

Have each small group introduce their members and share the safety guidelines they created to everyone. You will be amazed at the wisdom that people have about safety. Gain agreement from everyone on which guidelines to accept. Remind them that the guidelines are theirs rather than yours. If someone violates a guideline, you will call them on it.

Ask the group to monitor your facilitation and to inform you if you allowing any deviation from the agreed upon guidelines. When someone mentions a deviation, treat it with the utmost care and respect. It’s the ultimate demonstration of the value you put on safety.

Final Thoughts

Regardless of the method used, you can never be absolutely certain that all the participants feel safe. If someone would have asked me how safe I felt during the meeting with Harry Fox, I would have voted neutral or safe so that Harry wouldn’t find out.

The best that you can do is to solicit and respect everyone’s ideas. The leader that models appropriate behavior in meeting after meeting is constantly renewing and enriching safety and productivity.

Be a leader. Care. Listen. Model the behavior you want.

Acknowledgements

A special thank you to Jean McLendon for making me aware of the importance of safety and how to measure it; Jerry Weinberg for suggesting that the number one isn’t nearly as evocative as the number zero for connoting the absence of safety; and Esther Derby, Don Gray, and Jerry Weinberg for sharing their feedback about this article.

convert this post to pdf.

©2007 Steven M Smith

I argued in my first article about stand-up meetings that the right participants were the key to a successful meeting rather than whether the participants were standing up or sitting down. Despite my dislike for forcing people to stand up, I mentioned in that article my positive regard for other elements of the standard stand-up meeting.

What elements do I like? Why do I like them? How can we innovate?

Three elements of a SCRUM stand-up meeting stand out for me:

1. Knowing the agenda
2. Limiting duration
3. Minimizing participants

Knowing the Agenda

A daily SCRUM stand-up has each team member answer the following three questions:

• What did I accomplish yesterday?
• What will I do today? and
• What obstacles are impeding my progress?

All the participants know what is expected. I like this a lot. If the participants know what’s expected of them, they are more likely to prepare.

I think there are opportunities to innovate on this solid agenda. Rather than verbally report status information, ask each participant to write their status on sticky 3×5 cards. Ask for a separate card for each element of their answer to the three questions. For instance, 1) Completed refactoring of module Gamma, 2) Created automated test cases for module Delta, 3) Will begin coding module Delta (expect 3 days to develop), 4) Intermittent failures on server Toledo are slowing my efforts.

As you do the round robin, ask each person to read their cards and post them on a community white board. Using cards will cause the participants to prepare something before they arrive at the meeting. That will increase the pace of the statusing. It will provide information for publication to people who are interested in the project but could not attend. It can be compared with 3×5 cards from the day before to detect problems.

I also think there is an opportunity to add a fourth agenda item?What do I propose? For instance, I propose we divert our efforts on accomplishing X and use them to accomplish Y. The answer to this question notifies the team that a member wants the team to make a decision. As with the answers to the other questions, the team is notified but it doesn’t discuss or decide during the daily stand-up. That’s done at a separate meeting.

Limiting Duration

The objective for the duration of a daily stand-up meeting is 15 minutes or less.

I like short meetings. As a participant, I also like to have enough time to share my answers.

I suggest you divide 15 minutes or whatever you plan for the duration of your meeting by the number of participants. Is that enough time for a person to effectively status their work? For instance, if you have 10 participants, there is an average of 1.5 minutes available for each participant. Is that enough time? That’s 0.5 minutes to answer each question. That’s enough time for me to status, but is it enough for your participants?

I recommend that someone perform the role of time keeper. Alert each person, I like to use a chime, when they are 30 seconds from their time limit. And again when 10 seconds remain. Stop them and move to the next person when their time limit expires.

Please, don’t stop someone in the middle of their report in the first few status meetings. At a point where the participants have had sufficient time to practice delivering status, it may be time to stop them. Without being at the meeting, I can’t know whether stopping them is appropriate. But you can.

Time in a meeting is like money in the economy. It’s capital. Use it wisely and you will increase your return.

Minimizing Participants

A principle of a daily SCRUM stand-up is the separation of participants from observers. The less the number of meeting participants, the more time is available to each participant to share status information. This is a smart action and I like it a lot.

I interpret there is more to this element than merely minimizing the number of participants. It’s about gathering the right people together and demonstrating to them that they have the authority, power, and responsibility to produce the
product.

If your hiring process isn’t putting the right people in the meeting, minimizing participants will be less effective than it could be.

Gathering Feedback

There isn’t a feedback component that I am aware of in the standard stand-up meeting format. I believe a status meeting becomes more effective when it adapts to its environment through the use of participant feedback. Without
feedback to improve a meeting, it becomes a picture of a sprinting cheetah rather than a real sprinting cheetah. Pictures of cheetahs don’t turn when its prey makes a turn, but a real cheetah does.

Find out what turns your team needs to make by gathering feedback about the meeting. See my blog post Measure ROTI (Return On Time Investment) to learn how to gather the feedback. Note, I don’t recommend gathering feedback every meeting: I suggest instead gathering it every third or fourth meeting. When you do gather feedback, respond to it; otherwise, a picture of a snoozing cheetah is apt visualization of the state of your meeting.

Final Thoughts

Too many people believe that stand-up meeting are more effective than traditional status meeting because the participants are forced to stand up. That’s a fallacy. Increased effectiveness results from the other elements of a stand-up meeting — knowing the agenda, limiting duration, and minimizing participants. The elements are classic elements of any effective
meeting. The actual application of these elements is the root cause for a stand-up meeting being more successful than a traditional status meeting.

A possible benefit for forcing people to stand up is notification. Participants who have continually experienced ineffective status meetings — those with poor agendas, poor participant preparation, poor adherence to the meeting schedule, and poor choices about who will participate — may benefit from physical notification that the meeting has changed. Once the notification is complete though, standing up loses its value.

I know people from an earlier era who believe wearing a tie makes developers more alike and more disciplined. I don’t buy it. And I don’t buy the idea that participants should keep standing up once they understand the rules for participation. Forcing a developer to continue standing up is like forcing them to wear a tie. Both actions will make them uncomfortable and neither will improve their productivity.

Use the standard stand-up meeting format as a starting point. It’s a solid foundation. Don’t worship the format. Encourage innovation so that your status meeting better responds to the unique needs of your team.

For More Information

Jason Yip, It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings. It’s an excellent article.

You will find an abundance of information about this topic on the web. Search for “stand-up meetings” using your favorite search engine.

convert this post to pdf.

©2007 Steven M Smith

Stand up meetings are popular in software development organizations now.

What makes a stand-up meeting more effective than a traditional meeting to socialize status information?

Nothing. The effectiveness of a stand-up meeting, like the traditional status meeting, depends on the participants. If you have the right people at the meeting, you can be effective whether the participants are sitting down, standing up, or standing on their head.

The theory behind a stand-up meeting is that a physical reminder of the duration of the meeting will keep it shorter. The longer the meeting, the more your body signals it’s time to stop. The proponents of stand-up meetings like this natural time-boxing signal. Every participant feels the signal to some degree.

The signal may be too strong, however, for people who have a physical problem that make standing difficult. For instance, I twisted my ankle recently, it’s painful when I stand on it.

If I am a good teammate who listens and participates appropriately, does it matter whether I’m standing or sitting down with my ankle propped up? No, of course not. It matters how I participate, not the position of my body.

I have heard that proponents of stand-up meetings claim that the meetings helps build teamwork. If your teamwork is better, I am THRILLED for your team. But I doubt whether the stand up component made the difference.

When I started my career, I had to wear a tie every day. The next job required a suit. Management told me clothing built teamwork. I think standing up during a meeting is like wearing a tie. My teamwork isn’t any better wearing a suit and tie than it is when I wear shorts and a t-shirt And I don’t believe my team’s effectiveness changes whether they are standing up or sitting down during a meeting.

If you want to have effective meetings of any kind, you need leaders in the room. That’s the kind of people I referred to as “the right people” earlier. Leaders who organize the meeting; leaders who lead the meeting; and leaders who follow other leaders.

If you have people who see no value in meeting with their teammates, having people stand up might help the meeting from lasting too long. But there is more to an effective meeting than preventing people from being trapped in a room.

convert this post to pdf.