Scrum Practice Series bis: How do we open the daily station _scrum practice

The daily scrum is one of the most well-known symbols of scrum, a hallmark of scrum, but not always controversial because it is difficult to implement. Many of the projects that have deliberately tried scrum have been tested for some time and are often the first to be backed up at the station and then questioned.

There are many reasons for questioning, the first complaint is "boring" (low energy), in this case, the station will be treated as a routine briefing, without hearing the actual content of the discussion, boring, in other teams, the station will appear long and "inefficient", discussion rambling, "there is a meeting time , I have finished my work early. "

All kinds of voices are stating that it is not easy to open the daily station. So why does scrum stick to the daily stand as one of its most important practices? What is the purpose of the station meeting?

The daily station will!= briefing

The daily station will never be a briefing, but a platform for communication between the team, to share information, to express commitments and to put up roadblocks (difficulties encountered, what needs help), to solve the problem of teamwork.

Scrum advocates the idea of self-organization, promotes the self-management of the team, and the daily station is a very important practical form of the team's autonomous state synchronization, risk management, and decision-making. The team will understand the overall status through the station and make collective decisions about the risks and problems exposed. A well-organized station is the result of a team's self-organizing needs, rather than a leader monitoring requirement.

Why you need a real whiteboard. At the beginning of Scrum practice, we chose the Jira on the electronic Agile Kanban, which can be customized according to the needs of different groups of Kanban status, classification, display mode, can be said that the function of electronic kanban is indeed very powerful. But a period of time down, we found that the effect of interaction between the team is not very good, the station will be on the face of the computer on their own, someone to see the computer to deal with their own things, some people bow to play mobile phones, their turn to the computer Balabala a pass. Long time the station will open more like a briefing, the form of too much content, with two words summed up is "boring."
Aware of this problem, we adjusted our strategy in time to give up the seemingly powerful electronic tools and turn to the most original kanban. It's amazing, since the team has a side of the board, you'll find that a lot of things happen naturally. Every day we stand in front of the whiteboard, while communicating with the team, while moving on the board to mark their own color notes, encounter new problems, immediately rewrite one, and then put their own color tag up.   Abandoned the cold computer, we finally really "face", interaction and communication have become "vivid" and "open" up. Do you know.   The benefits of this real whiteboard are widely recognized in the agile community, and some experts even believe that whiteboard can be used to influence the culture of an organization. Why should we stand up and discuss.
When standing, thinking will be more active; standing a bit like doing present, this ability should be cultivated at ordinary times, stand everyone easy to make gestures, stand to prevent sleepy sleep, stand in the open space, there is no table what block, so from the psychological will make people more open, more willing to confide, More willing to tell the truth.

"Three card" type of station will be accompanied by the application of Kanban, daily station will be more and more active communication, the topic is more and more divergent, gradually our station will begin to become lengthy and "inefficient." We gradually realized that a station would be open, we need a moderator to grasp the pace of the meeting. Some people to control the rhythm is good, but in our team, in order to strengthen the ownership consciousness, everyone is the owner, so our moderator is rotation. So how to let each host can open the station will be good. We need an effective set of mechanisms. After a long period of practical exploration, the team gradually developed a set of "three card" type of station law.

At the beginning of the station, the host will release the red, yellow and green three cards to all participants. In the course of the whole station, anyone can raise a card at any time to exercise his rights.
Take a "yellow card" and ask questions, to inform speakers of synergies and reliance information; "Red card", used to interrupt the conversation, avoid excessive discussion and waste of time, improve the efficiency of the station; "Green Card" represents everyone's voice, the card returned to the moderator said the statement finished.   When all the "green cards" have been put into the hands of the host, and no more questions, then the Declaration station will end. It is by such simple rules of the game, on the one hand, help the host to find the feeling to grasp the rhythm, while the conference control of the Power and responsibility to everyone at the meeting, anyone can talk about excessive discussion at any time, so that the station will be "useful" while maintaining "efficient."

Ensure continuous improvement ...

These are the strategies and methods that we have accumulated in the practice of the daily station, and in the end, we want to keep the daily station open, and in addition to the strategy, you still need to let the team maintain the motivation of continuous improvement, according to the situation of each phase of the project to adjust adaptively.

For example, the station will be time, there are many agile books are recommended to the station as the beginning of the day. After repeated attempts and adaptations, the team decided to set the time for the station to start 11:30 before lunch, on the one hand, you can have a relatively complete undisturbed for a whole morning, in addition, the power of eating will allow everyone to accelerate, the security station will be efficient, even if there are some controversial topics can be transferred to lunch to continue the discussion.