automation of stand up meetings
Hello!
In this article I want to talk about a solution that turned out to be useful for us – automation of internal team stand-up calls.
It will hardly come as a surprise that, according to the latest research analysts from Jay Copilot, calls are still among the top irritants of IT specialists (40.3%). If you look at the details of the respondents' answers for this category, then, probably, “daily calls” will appear in the examples of many.
Until recently, we were no exception. It’s hard to forget the feeling, probably familiar to many, when you’re at a daily stand-up at 9:00 in the morning, still lying under a warm blanket, with a cup of coffee in hand, you wait for your turn for a two-minute “speech”, which is very important to hear to the other 15 meeting participants.
Our IT department consists of 80 people distributed across several areas and teams. Like many, we went through the classic path from a lack of intra-team synchronization to its excess, and ultimately, it seems, we found our golden mean. No, we did not cancel dailies, but came to a fairly simple and, as it turned out, popular among our employees solution – we transferred the standup to a text format, where Google Apps Script (GAS) acts as a Scrum Master.
Description of the tool
At the end of each working day, all employees of the IT project teams receive an automatic mailing – a reminder to fill out the Daily Stand-up Report:
Where, by clicking on the link to the Google form, you need to answer two simple questions in free format:
What did you do today?
What are you planning to do tomorrow?
All responses are recorded in a Google Sheet, grouped by team, and an email is sent out via GAS every working day at 8:45 a.m. — general Stand-up report for the entire IT department of the following structure:
We didn’t come to this version of automated Stand-up report right away, and at first we filled out a Google form only team leadscollecting mini-reports from employees every evening in chats on the work done and plans for tomorrow, and then combing all the collected answers into a digestible summary. This quickly led us to obvious problems: excessive workload on team leaders and pressure on employees, who were expected to report to their manager in a private message every evening.
By transferring the tool completely into the hands of employees, we, compared to the starting point, have moved away from the boring morning calls, added transparency between teams (which physically could not be present at all standups at the same time, and now, like everyone else, receive a summary of all teams), and began to have a history of the daily progress of all departments in terms of specialists.
We don’t have any strict requirements for the format or content, it’s enough to describe it in such a way that a teammate from the same domain can understand what it’s about.
If for some reason an employee has not filled out the form, and in the Stand-up report there is “No data” next to his last name, then for such cases we have a turquoise rule: at the earliest opportunity, the latecomer simply shares the answers to the same two simple questions in the team chat in Telegram.
Employees' opinion
Based on feedback from the employees themselves, This approach promotes not only self-organization but also (maybe this will surprise someone) relaxation: after several months of working with the Daily stand-up report, some guys begin to associate pressing the “send form” button as that very boundary between work and life, a kind of Rubicon, after which there is a release from work thoughts and dedication to personal affairs.
We also did not receive any complaints about the reduction of communications. The tool does not exclude regular communication for those who wish, but only frees from the obligatory discussion of status and task list.
Once built, the system even protected itself by withstanding the challenge:
At some point, the management team began to wonder if the process had become routine, and we offered the teams and team leaders a choice: return to classic morning calls or keep everything as is. The reaction was surprising: almost unanimously, the employees insisted that they wanted to keep the tool, and confidently defended it. Below is the feedback from one of my employees about the idea of bringing back voice stand-upsIn many ways it reflects the opinion of the majority:
“I think this is just bad idea.
Within a specific project, dailies are a blessing. Within
teams for a bunch of different projects – very doubtful.
And here's why I think so:
There is a great value in text dailies, although not transparent to everyone – they can be re-read by the employee himself in the morning and at the end of the day. This highlights well if you forgot something or missed something due to the hustle and bustle
If you do a daily in the morning, then
Due to weather, business or something else, there will not always be a full lineup. We are all late sometimes or simply start the day in the smoking room for 5-10 minutes. Elementary extra stress “what if I'm late for the daily”, and the day begins with haste and nerves
In the morning, many of us have a routine – sort out our mail, look at our tasks and slowly start rolling into the day. But if you do a daily in the afternoon or evening, they tear you out of your work and flow state
Given the specifics of the department, we may not always be able to complete it in 15 minutes. And making a long status = forcing everyone else to be burdened with problems or lords on other projects from the very morning”
What do managers think?
I am sharing a podcast where our IT director, the direct author of the solution, talks about the Stand-up report as a management tool (in the video at 55:07):
From the point of view of the effectiveness of the tool, it is also important how regularly and efficiently immediate manager monitors content, is in the context of Stand-up reporting of his team. This, of course, requires the manager's time, but it no longer requires the time of 15 team members who previously waited for their turn to “Stand-up” at the morning meeting.
Will this always work?
It is worth noting that this approach should not be considered a silver bullet. The tool may not be suitable for processes where there is no need for Stand-up, for example, some teams of system administrators. Or, on the contrary, where this need is especially acute: highly dispersed employees, where classic Stand-up is the only opportunity to communicate by voice/video.
I hope this experience can be useful for you, or at least save time on testing such hypotheses 🙂
I'd love to hear your opinion: would such a tool suit your team, and if not, why not?
Thank you for your attention!
Andrey Nikitin
Head of IT-direction Transport at FM Logistic
