Have I made a difference today?
The future of work lies in redefining it as something that makes a difference EACH DAY.
Work is a purpose, not a place. Work is about productively applying your talent. Work is about making your life, and the lives of other people, stronger as a product of your efforts.
Tom Rath - ARE YOU FULLY CHARGED?
Virtual Stand-Up Explainer @ RELAYTO
RELAYTO team members provide text-based update via Slack to the entire organization. It's a best practice adopted from agile development; an equivalent of passing the virtual baton in a team relay. The baton is the "/" in RELAYTO/ and a core part of our DNA so this document addresses 4 topics to unpack the rationale and implementation of our baton passing.
WHY?
Introduce team members to the objectives of virtual stand-up meetings.
WHAT?
Share team members in the practices of the stand-up meeting. We want the entire team familiar with the best practices governing these meetings.
HOW?
Clarify the key logistics and specifics of our implementation of virtual stand-up meetings.
BIG PICTURE
Ensuring an efficient, effective virtual stand-up meeting reinforces our culture and mission. We decide collectively what aspects of our own implementation should be continued, improved or abandoned
Why?
Why virtual stand-up / status update?
A virtual stand-up meeting is quite different from a weekly status meeting on a team call. The key objective for a virtual stand-up meeting is to ensure that the activities of each team member are aligned in progressing the project towards the successful completion of the project goal. In other words: the stand-up meeting is when each team member re-validates that they are properly allocating their time to the most important project activities. Working on the right things in the right way.
A virtual stand-up meeting is:
- An explicit reinforcement of the commitment by each team member to accomplish a goal
- A means of dynamically adjusting the work by each team member to accomplish the goal
- A daily synchronization between team members, informing teammates of work activities, progress, and issues
- A method of cross-checking progress with teammates
- An accountability mechanism that has each team member accountable to other team members for their responsibilities
- A visible demonstration of the ability of the team to self-manage their project responsibilities
- A way to stay connected across distances
It's also a good life practice according to some people, who were they alive today ... would love our virtual standup :)
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”- Aristotle
"Whatever gets measured gets done" - Peter Drucker
"Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me." - Steve Jobs
What?
3 Questions that Need to Be Answered
What did I accomplish today / since the last update?
Given that all RELAYTO content is web-based, it's great to include links to RELAYTO documents you worked on internal / customer-facing provided they have the right permissions.
What do you plan to do tomorrow?
Wild Card. Most common questions:
- What obstacles, if any, are impeding my progress?
- What have I learned?
- What's going on that's relevant in my personal or family life?
How?
Additional Tips
- How to share? You are presenting progress information in terms that are meaningful to the other team members. Your audience is everyone else on the team – remember this is not a status update to the project manager - although your project manager does benefit from your update.
- Provide links and other supporting materials so that others could access your content easily
- How to pay attention? You have an explicit responsibility to pay attention to what others share. You’re listening for connection points to your own activities and areas where you may be able to help.
Timing
When: End of Day
Rule of thumb for virtual updates: Missing an update = Missing an Important Meeting with the Customer
Big Picture
How does it help achieve our mission?
Introducing a daily virtual standup meeting is one the quickest most astonishing improvement we have observed on any project and one of the fundamental aspects of communication with an agile team.
- Avoid duplication: if A plans to work on a problem that was already solved two months ago by B, then you can bet that B (or someone else) will tell A before she/he even starts wasting time;
- Clear roadblocks: if someone is blocked by something particular, this is the perfect time to check who could help: “I have been working on problem X, with little progress. Has anyone seen X happening?”;
- Detect roadblocks: if John tells the same story for the fifth time in a row, everyone else will realize that he is severely stuck and needs a hand. Catch him right after the meeting and get him some help. Also if someone doesn't provide an update -- it's a possible sign that they are stuck, lost motivation, etc
- Boost team coherence and commitment: team coherence and commitment is increased when everyone speaks to everyone else on a regular basis. Especially when you don’t all work in the same room, or when different members of the team work on different aspects of the same project
- Increase team leader's accountability: daily standup meetings even make the project manager more accountable. When your manager comes to ask your status, would you dare ask her or him? Probably not. But in a daily standup meeting the manager is reporting his status to everyone else;
- Increase team member accountability: daily standup meetings make each team member more accountable as well. A manager might not notice that person A is over-engineering her solution – but the rest of the team will;
- Spread transparency: if you are the project manager, then the project is probably transparent to you already. But there is immense value in team-wide transparency too. People are not machines, and love knowing what’s happening. This is the place!
- Connect across distances: as a global-by-default organization, the meeting is our opportunity to come together in a convenient, asynchronous way. It's an opportunity to also express your personality in writing.
- Self-awareness. Not every day is perfect for everyone all the time. We are human. It's OK to admit it. And most importantly learn from it. With a bit of reflection and self-awareness that the update provides, every morning is an opportunity to start afresh and grow toward our personal best. And to have better and better days ahead.
Personally, I find it to be one of the highlights of my day. When I wake up & when I go to sleep, I love to see how we as an organization have moved forward.
You may find other things that work and don't work for you. So let's keep this a living ritual. And improve it.
Alex
P.S. The Daily standup helps us deliver on RELAYTO mojo daily.
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