Keeping stand-up meetings concise

In a recent LinkedIn Live session, an attendee asked for the best approaches to keeping stand-up meetings from going too long. This is a common issue when you have an excited agile team looking to get things done quickly or having challenges. Here are approaches to ensure your stand-up meetings won’t go too long and give everyone leg cramps!

Create a strict structure for each team member’s update. Have each team member report on a limited number of topics, and stop them if their input “wanders.”  Experience recommends the following structure:

• What features were completed, or moved to the next stage (i.e., from coding to testing)
• What you intend to work on, and a brief explanation on what you may need from other team members, if appropriate
• A concise description of any issue(s) experienced so team members can volunteer to assist.

As the Scrum Master, ensure team members’ reports don’t update you specifically. Stand-up meeting discussions should target the whole team. Separate talks with the Scrum Master may be appropriate, but should not be conducted during the stand-up. The Scrum Master should set an example for the team by shutting down any conversations that aren’t targeting the entire team.

Thanks. Who’s next? This phrase, used prudently and gently, can help move the meeting along and serve as a reminder to a team member who’s taking too much time with their update.

End the meeting at 20 minutes, with a warning at 15 minutes. Inform the team that you will break up the meeting in 20 minutes, regardless of whether everyone has shared their update. At 15 minutes, warn everyone that you only have five more minutes before adjourning the meeting. While this can seem a bit drastic, in my experience, it doesn’t take more than once or twice to change team members’ behavior. They will become brief and concise, and meetings will be completed on time.

Have pre-defined time slots for follow-up discussions. Rather than randomly scheduling separate meetings to discuss issues or address other topics in depth, have pre-defined times for those follow-up discussions. This helps team members plan their work cadence and ensures that a person with an issue will have time to work through it with their peers. This reduces the chance they will try to shoehorn that discussion into a stand-up meeting.