Walking the board — changing up the standups
TL:DR we now only talk about WIP tickets in our standup
Why we made the change
Standups had become very very dull with people going through the 3 questions.
- What did I do yesterday?
- What am I doing today?
- Anything blocking me?
Everyone took their turn to talk in a circle and it was long and bit boring. Also there was an underlying feeling that you were justifying how you spent your time the day before rather than being about what you were going to do today. Lots of reports went “I had a lot of meetings, met with x for y, met with z for a etc”.
What we did
So we got rid of the three questions and started walking the board.
This begins with ignoring any columns not part of WIP or blocked. For our team the only columns we now look at in standup are
Doing | Blocked | Code & Design review
We go through each ticket on the now shrunken board and what needs to be done to get them deployed. The team plans their day around how best to move tickets across the board.
So far this has emerged with more focused, shorter standups and people seem to be enjoying them.
The biggest shift for me is it moves the focus away from what individuals are planning to do with their day onto what the team needs to get done. Anything that makes people feel more part of a team effort versus individual striving makes me happy.
