Daily Standups

BloomTech Labs Standup - Best Practices

Each team will participate in a standup. Your team's nominated TPM leads the standup. You are required to attend the standup or post an update in Slack, as important information is shared! The standup should be held at the start of class unless there is a conflicting event. If so, the standup will occur during the next timeslot. We will explore some best practices that successful teams have implemented.

Objective

This section aims to share best practices to help your team have effective standup and ship features. The number one goal of the standup is communication. The standup informs the group what their day looks like and advises the TPM if there are blockers.

A Successful Introduction

The introduction is the very first part of the standup. The TPM is the owner and will share any news about the team's day, inform the group of scheduled meetings, or address any schedule changes (if any). During this time, the TPM will also address any outstanding actions from the previous day.

Jira

As the TPM discusses items with the team, it is best to share their screen, showing the team's Jira board. By having visibility, the task that the team needs to work on is at the center of the call. Versus asking general questions, your TPM will ask each team member the following questions:

1. What did you accomplish or work on yesterday?

2. What are you going to work on today?

3. Are there any blockers preventing you from getting these tasks completed?

While the TPM is asking these questions, they will work the Jira board based on the responses. Anything completed will move to the next column on the board. Anything that the team member will work on will be assigned a team member & placed in the correct column, and the TPM will note any blockers.

To be effective on task completion, evaluate the work that is involved. If the task requires more than two developers, break that task into two tasks. It is good to ensure that no more than two developers, assigned per task as a practice. The goal is to keep the tasks manageable and to encourage pair programming.

TPMs: If you chase blockers down while your team is working on features/tasks, the team will be more productive! The TPM should own taking this kind of action. That way, the team members are not focused on items they could not resolve in 20+ minutes. If needed, please engage your product, data science, engineering, or design managers!