How to run an agile status meeting
Status meeting are very important meetings for managers to learn about what the people that report to them directly, or indirectly, have been working on. A proper status meeting will gather all the participants around a large table, where the leader can clearly see everyone. There should be at least 15 people in the meeting, however it is much better to have between 20 and 25 people at the table, in addition to the manager leading the meeting. At the start of the meeting the manager should take a few minutes and speak about the current direction, or executive decisions made. After this each individual will give a short, 2 - 5 minute, overview of what they have been working on, including any challenges they are facing. The manager should then start to work with that individual, and anyone else needed during the meeting to come up with a plan to address any challenges. I am hoping that at this point you are thinking I must have lost my mind, It is April 1st today...
Ok, and now for the real answer. No, just no. There are not now, nor have there ever been, nor can there ever be an agile status meeting. If you have not had the "pleasure" of sitting through a 25 person status meeting, then consider yourself blessed. At one company I worked for the manager insisted on having weekly status meetings, we were not an agile shop, we had a number of wasteful meetings. We all saw the status meeting for the waste of time that it was. There were 20 of us in the room with the manager and the first few meetings wasted over two hours each. After that we, those of us reporting our status, made a pact that none of us would talk for over 1 minute. When anyone new joined we needed to explain the rules. We of course made sure to speak up outside of the meeting if there were any challenges or issues, we just abhorred the waste of time. Our goal was not to keep management in the dark, but to not waste our time.
Notice that in the status meeting, we all sat around while just a few people talked about resolving each issue, different people for each issue, but always just a few. This is one reason that when impediments are brought up during standup, they should be collected and addressed after standup. Doing so allows us to later focus on the impediment and involve only the people that need, or want, to be involved. The goal is not to exclude anyone, but to allow everyone to focus on the right thing at the right time, and never be at a point that they are in a meeting where other people are having a conversation.
There are other ways that daily standup should be different than a status meeting. A status meeting is generally to give status to an individual that is higher up in the organizational hierarchy. The conversation in the daily standup should be focused on the team, not any one individual. Daily standup helps the team understand their progress on the current story so that they can adjust (self-organize) as needed. Because the team is not providing status to someone higher up, but instead to each other they can focus on the meeting and be open and honest about the state of each task, which is rare in any status meeting I have been in.
So, you find yourself in a status meeting, what should you do? In most cases the manager is looking for information that they are not getting via other methods. Step one is to find out what the manager really wants. If it is information, find a way to radiate that information to the manager and to everyone else, see my previous post on information radiators. If it is something else the manager is looking for, then hopefully you can work through that issue with your manager. If you can't well, I'm not sure what to say, other than I'm sorry.
Here's hoping you never have to sit through another status meeting.
Stay Agile.
Ok, and now for the real answer. No, just no. There are not now, nor have there ever been, nor can there ever be an agile status meeting. If you have not had the "pleasure" of sitting through a 25 person status meeting, then consider yourself blessed. At one company I worked for the manager insisted on having weekly status meetings, we were not an agile shop, we had a number of wasteful meetings. We all saw the status meeting for the waste of time that it was. There were 20 of us in the room with the manager and the first few meetings wasted over two hours each. After that we, those of us reporting our status, made a pact that none of us would talk for over 1 minute. When anyone new joined we needed to explain the rules. We of course made sure to speak up outside of the meeting if there were any challenges or issues, we just abhorred the waste of time. Our goal was not to keep management in the dark, but to not waste our time.
Notice that in the status meeting, we all sat around while just a few people talked about resolving each issue, different people for each issue, but always just a few. This is one reason that when impediments are brought up during standup, they should be collected and addressed after standup. Doing so allows us to later focus on the impediment and involve only the people that need, or want, to be involved. The goal is not to exclude anyone, but to allow everyone to focus on the right thing at the right time, and never be at a point that they are in a meeting where other people are having a conversation.
There are other ways that daily standup should be different than a status meeting. A status meeting is generally to give status to an individual that is higher up in the organizational hierarchy. The conversation in the daily standup should be focused on the team, not any one individual. Daily standup helps the team understand their progress on the current story so that they can adjust (self-organize) as needed. Because the team is not providing status to someone higher up, but instead to each other they can focus on the meeting and be open and honest about the state of each task, which is rare in any status meeting I have been in.
So, you find yourself in a status meeting, what should you do? In most cases the manager is looking for information that they are not getting via other methods. Step one is to find out what the manager really wants. If it is information, find a way to radiate that information to the manager and to everyone else, see my previous post on information radiators. If it is something else the manager is looking for, then hopefully you can work through that issue with your manager. If you can't well, I'm not sure what to say, other than I'm sorry.
Here's hoping you never have to sit through another status meeting.
Stay Agile.
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