Just about all agile methods have some kind of a daily coordination meeting. It might be called a standup or a daily coordination meeting or a daily scrum or any number of other things. The point is that this meeting is focused on actively managing the workflow and it’s often done poorly.
Key points:
- The point of this meeting is to actively manage the workflow. If we’re just giving a status update then we’re missing the point.
- If we have multiple classes of service then we discuss more important classes of service before less important ones. For example, if we have expedited work and standard work then all expedited work gets discussed before any standard work.
- Within a class of service, we talk about the work in age order from oldest to newest.
- Note that many teams will walk from top to bottom in each column and columns in order from right to left. While this isn’t guaranteed to follow age order, it’s often a close enough approximation and is an easy heuristic to follow.
- For each item, we want to discuss whatever is necessary to ensure it’s flowing effectively across the board.
- If it’s blocked then we’ll want to talk about how to unblock it.
- If it’s in progress then we’ll want to talk about what’s left and how we can move it further to the right.
- If it’s not blocked but also not getting any attention then we’ll want to discuss that. Likely we have too much work in progress.
- If the team is doing work that’s not visible then we need to make it visible.