Stand up meetings are famous for a simple ‘today and yesterday’ format that should be done in just 15 minutes. So it would appear simple to master - right?

Mastery isn’t about being able to parrot out a ritual. It’s about teaching a team how to have conversations at a responsible moment.

To make stand ups a habit you should help a team to:

• recognise when they need to talk
• have the right conversation
• realise the benefit of having it

To do this effectively, you must not be focussed on following the rules of a stand up - instead it’s about knowing how and when to change them.

What are the rules of stand up?

1. Be short and regular

The type of conversation you see during stand ups can and should happen whenever they’re needed. Don’t just practice them during the same 15 minute slot once a day.

These conversations are not a meeting, so don’t treat them like one. Start by giving people the rules, tools and etiquette needed to carry them out well.

These could be:

• some agreed rules for working together (like the today /yesterday format)
• a check that you have the right people involved
• the tools that people need (like a Kanban board to look at)

2. Help people be clear about the right thing to do right now

Stand ups are not a status report, you should have other information radiators that do this job. Beware the people who use them as such.

Keep conversations relevant and focussed on the tactics needed for a group of people to achieve an outcome. Notice if that does not happen and make an observation. If it still keeps happening, give constructive feedback afterwards.

3. Be at the last responsible moment

There’s little point putting energy into the next most important thing. Do what’s important now and deliver it.

The more that you learn to do this, the more that you learn to respond to change over follow a plan.

So think of stand ups as being about how a team understands its context right now and the things it needs to do based on what people have just learnt about a given situation.

4. Make a commitment to help each other

Teach people to listen and respond to each other. This practice will help you notice and respond to peoples commitments. You might notice things like:

• someone giving the same update a few days in a row
• surprises or :tada: moments
• a task not getting done after it was committed to

In my experience this can easily go left unsaid, even if it’s obvious. This is only natural, and it’s nobody’s fault, we build teams around a belief that everyone does their best, so it’s awkward and unnatural to call this out. It’s your job as a delivery manager to make this visible and do it with kindness. Often until things are said, nothing can be done. (Unless you employ a mind reader).

Teach the team to notice the invisible and make it visible, only then can they inspect and adapt.

5. Delivery people should be self destructive

You should want teams to not need a delivery manager.

You’re not supposed to solve every blocker. Just the ones that remove focus, or would take someone in an unhelpful or random direction.

That doesn’t make us useless. We’re really not.

We have an important role to help build good habits of effectual tactical conversations. To do that you need to know what to notice, when give feedback and how to make experiments.

Notice things

To really notice things, you need remove yourself from the equation so that you can look at the whole.

Stand outside of the group and use silence as your tool of choice:

• body language
• energy
• language
• alignment to a goal
• a sense of togetherness
• the physical space people use
• eye contact

Your measure of success is to look for a group of people who leave a conversation energised and enthused about getting something of value done.

Give feedback and make observations

Feedback and observations are two subtly different things.

An observation is just a statement grounded on something that you’ve seen. Be specific and precise.

Feedback is a statement grounded on opinion and is usually best given if you are personally affected by a something.

If your making an observation do that, don’t confuse it with feedback. If you do, your message will be confusing.

Make experiments

You are an expert in agile methods, so you are well placed to offer ideas and small experiments to the team along with your hypothesis

Explain your thinking and get the explicit permission from the group to try it.

Whatever you do, lead by example

You don’t really teach people to do these three things, it’s all about your leadership. Lead by example, bring your full self to any situation and make your best effort.