Using The Standup To Drive Workflow
Do you feel that your team is not staying in sync? Are team or project meetings feeling overly burdensome? Then you need a better way for the team to be able to quickly show progress, key tasks, and obstacles. Sure, you can wait until your weekly team meeting to address those areas, or you deal with them in an ad hoc way via a Teams or Slack channel. However, you may want to consider incorporating a regular standup or huddle into your team’s workflow instead.
You may have heard of the daily standup used in Agile methodology and think that it only applies to software development teams, but in fact it is being applied across various non-tech functional areas such as marketing, customer service, and even accounting. Really any team that has a workflow where they are producing an output can apply the team standup. It does not need to only apply to an output in the form of a product either. It could be used for operational related work such as an IT service desk team that is managing tickets. The point is that the amount and types of teams using this method are large and wide.
So, what makes a standup different from other meetings? For one, they are meant to be short and to the point. This is not a time for philosophical discussion on best practices or going on fact finding missions. 10 to 15 minutes is usually the right amount. I have even seen teams that use countdown timers to drive home the point. Next, you want to make sure the agenda is focused on a small set of topics. In a typical standup, you may go over the following:
What did you accomplish?
What will you be working on?
What is blocking you from accomplishing your work?
Your team can choose to adjust the agenda, but I would encourage that you keep it simple and focused on the work at hand and identify issues without diving into problem solving. You could also include a quick review of operational metrics to determine if any of your workflows seem to be indicating an issue that needs to be addressed. It can also boost moral to do a recap at the end of the week highlighting any major successes from the team. While the agenda should be tight, the team will appreciate keeping the standup jovial and focused on moving the team forward.
There also needs to be a way to visually depict the information that you are discussing. A digital visual board is one that I often choose and have seen greater adoption from organizations when it comes to tracking work. There are numerous tools out on the market that help teams with visual management to track the team’s tasks, accomplishments, and issues. However, I would always recommend that you start with the simplest tool available that is transparent, promotes collaboration, and has the right balance of features relative to the team’s needs. The widely used Microsoft Teams, has a Planner app already available and that can be easily stood up. This is a terrific way to get your team to document the activities they are working on, with minimal detail and in a standardized way. It can also be updated very quickly and is easy to learn. One caveat is that the team should think about what type of information is needed in the task card. Microsoft Planner does have functionality that allows you to use conditional formatting, send out automated reminders, and view the tasks as a list or board. However, without clear understanding for how the team will use the tool, it could soon turn daunting for any user. Eventually you are left with tool that no one uses.
Start small and simple when it comes to using a digital board. At minimum, the board should have some way to depict what tasks need to happen, what is in-progress and what is completed. Typically, a simple board may have three columns with titles “To Do,” “Doing” and “Done.” Keep in mind that the purpose behind the standup is to help the team drive the workflow by collaborating around the key activities, what needs to happen and what is preventing the team from moving forward. It is not a deep dive session, but a brief period of time to get the team together so they move together and make progress. Also, by incorporating technology with the use of digital visual boards it can help establish a reference point for everyone to access, make real-time updates and better support working remotely. If you are interested in incorporating the standup into your team’s workflow, remember to start with the following:
Introduce the concept / benefits of the standup
Identify a simple agenda
Land on the time and frequency of the standup
Pick a simple tool that can capture the work
Start doing the standup
The team may feel awkward starting them, but if everyone continues to move forward the benefits will be recognized everyone over time. You should not get caught up in running a perfect meeting. The team just needs to stick to the agenda and keep people focused on what needs to be done.
