Over the past year, our team have grown from 3 to 6 people. It is now much harder for me to keep track who's doing what and when. Couple with the fact that we are now handling more projects, things can get rather messy.

Luckily, we adopted the daily scrum meeting from Agile Development practices. It is also known as stand-up meeting or team huddle. It is a simple idea where the whole team get together everyday at the same time and place to update each other.

How to run a daily scrum meeting

Same time, same place, everyday. Make this your team ritual.
Keep things short. E.g. 1 min max per person.
Decide who starts first. (Last to arrive, first to start or random)
Each team members start by answering these 3 questions in order
- What did I do yesterday?
- What I am going to do today?
- What is blocking me from completing my tasks?
Deal with blocking issues AFTER the meeting

BENEFITS OF THE MEETING

Ritual to start the day

The meeting acts as a daily starting point for the team. Although we practice flexi-time at our company, we make it a point to get together everyday at 11AM for the meeting. This let us start the day with clarity and focus.

Focus

The 3 questions are designed to keep the focus on what's being done. It keeps you accountable to what you did yesterday and also forces you to plan your day. And if there's any thing that is blocking you, it can be rectified as soon as possible.

PROGRESS & STATUS

The meeting also serves as an efficient way to convey progress and status between team members. Everyone will have a rough idea what others are working on and can also offer to help on blocking issues after the meeting.

If you manage a team but have problems tracking progress and keeping things in sync, do try this out. Get the whole team to agree on a time and place to meet daily. Get each of them to answer the 3 questions and most importantly, keep it short.

Photo credit: Ignacio Palomo Duarte