30 Mar 2023 5 min read
Daily Stand Up & Scrum Meeting • The Best Way to run a Weekly Sprint.
By Ebrahim Kothari
Product Manager
Sprint Planning & Daily Stand Up
It's really that simple!
Here is a small tip about something that made a great difference in managing a project from scratch.
The Traditional Method
To give you a bit of context, when I joined my current organization, the team followed a monthly sprint process.
The tasks were defined by the Product Manager (PM) every Monday for the entire week and a scrum call would be scheduled every Friday for taking an update of every task performed through the week.
The development team and the other departments like QA and Infra had only one opportunity to understand the tasks for the week and even for bringing up any mishaps from the previous week. The team would try and register as much information as they could from the one and only meeting held on Monday and then without any direction or a lot of communication, try and finish those tasks by Friday.
This method led to a lot of inconsistency and vulnerability amongst the team member as they felt misguided. Specifically:
- No accountability throughout the week until it was Friday about the status of various tasks that were defined on Monday.
- No structure or hierarchy followed while giving task updates.
- There were hardly any follow up questions with the PM or with the other members of the team as the work was remote and no defined meetings for the same.
- No proper understanding about the actual progress of the Project ever.
At our South Mumbai office
How we changed our approach
As I started learning about the work culture, individual capacity of every member as well as the sense of responsibility and commitment that each member had for the on going projects, it was pretty clear to me that in order to make the different processes of the organisation more efficient it was very important to interact with the team on the daily basis.
I therefore started with scheduling daily stand up meetings and the results blew my mind.
I also realized that as important as the daily stand up meetings were, we also had to start running daily scrums at the end of the day as well and that brought an incredible level of productivity up.
My take on that:
- Easier to understand the capacity of every individual team member in terms of their pace of completing tasks on a daily basis as well as their ability to understand every task defined.
- Easier to track the progress of the project as the tasks are defined on a weekly basis.
- The entire effort of the project can be divided in terms of weeks, this makes it easier to plan and organise the entire project.
- This process makes each and every member of the team more accountable towards the tasks that are assigned to them as the updates are taken daily and progress of every goal is always discussed and even contemplated.
- Leaves a very little scope for anyone to slack off.
- It's a great activity to motivate people on a daily basis.
- It's a great team building activity for members who are working remotely as it creates a sense of closeness to the rest of the team.
Ever since this process was implemented there has been tremendous change in the working of the organisation. We have completed and delivered 12 projects perfectly on schedule, back to back. This has also resulted in improved morale of the team as this process gives clarity to everyone and removes any kind of insecurity and confusion related to work.
I hope this article helps you make your processes efficient too! Now tell me: what's your tip to make your projects more efficient?
#projectmanagement
# productmanagement
# scrummaster
# scrummethods
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By Ebrahim Kothari
Product Manager
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