Category: daily standup

One Daily Thing

My Scrums (daily stand-up meetings) now incorporate this little question from ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ by Tim Ferriss, highlighting a couple of Scrum principles:

If this is the one thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?

On the outset, I know I am pretty ambitious about what I plan on doing per day, but framing the daily list in this way not only sets a clear priority as a tactical Product Owner, but also stresses that something is getting done. At the end of the day, it is not left in progress, it’s… done!

If I can’t see myself getting the one thing done that day, it might be due to impediments, or the task/story is just too large. (Hmm… really? Can’t get one thing done? Let’s address this or, heck, just accept this…)

If I can see myself getting the one thing done that day, the question not only leads to a visualization, but also to a sense of future satisfaction. (Hmm… yeah… I can get that done, I can see it now… and it’ll feel good, maybe even awesome…)

Discipline of Sleep

I find I am less likely to execute a 15-minute stand-up meeting with myself in the morning if I’d rather be lying in bed because I am tired.

Solution: commit to getting a decent amount of sleep every night. It starts with going to bed at a consistently decent time.

This is what I am working on.

Daily Stand-up, Beyond Mechanics: A Measure of Self-Organization

The following are my notes from a Scrum Alliance article – its title is that of this post.

By Bachan Anand, CSM, CSP, he shares ways to tune the scrum / daily stand-up meeting. Building up to a very neat table, he outlines how to run the scrum of a high-performance team in terms of self-organization, focus, collaboration, rhythm, courage, and respect. My favorite example is a solution for one particular self-organization issue, where team members share status as if reporting to managers (ScrumMaster and Product Owner), instead of sharing status with their fellow pigs.

Each time a pig looks at a chicken during the scrum, the chicken should look at his/her shoes.