Although the idea of having daily standup meetings seems pretty ubiquitous in our world of software and agile, it’s nice to remember that not everyone in the general workforce has caught on to our methods. Sarah Gardner of Marketplace recently chatted with Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software about the rise of daily standup meetings in today’s workplace. Mike is no stranger to the agile world, and he is a frequent speaker at software events, including our own Agile Development Practices conference.

In the Q-and-A, Mike enlightens the interviewer on how meetings sans chairs and conference tables help people stay focused. Instead of folks checking their emails, surfing the web, or (gasp) nodding off in their seats, Mike says that people can be more productive with short “to-the-point” (so-to-speak) meetings as they can get back to the work at hand without distractions. Among the interview’s highlights is when Mike explains the importance of rituals in meetings.

From Marketplace:

Gardner: Now, even in a standing meeting, though, you still may have this problem of one or two people who like to talk too much. You know, they go into too much detail, they wander off into personal stories. What do you do about that?

Cohn: What I do is I encourage teams to come up with their own rules, whatever they want to do to help people realize they're going off-topic. Some teams, of course, are quite comfortable with that and they'll just point it out to each other. Other teams need little rituals or games to help point out that somebody's going a little too deep.

Gardner: A ritual? Like what?

Cohn: Well one of the teams -- I work with a number of teams that have done this, in fact -- they'll do something like hold up a, it always seems to be a rubber rat, to indicate we're going down a rathole. They'll have a rubber rat or two around where they're meeting, somebody will pick up a rat to indicate to their coworker they're going too deep. Why you're able to hold up a rat at your coworker rather than just confront them verbally, but shy people might be more comfortable holding up the rat.

Of course, much of this should come as no surprise to some of you who work in an agile environment, but this just goes to show how far agile has come since its inception. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal ran a feature story on the rise of the standup meeting as well and even quoted Mike, who explains what happens at his firm if someone shows up late.

From The Wall Street Journal:

If employees are late to this meeting, often called a "daily scrum," they sometimes must sing a song like "I'm a Little Teapot," do a lap around the office building or pay a small fine, says Mike Cohn, president of Mountain Goat Software, Lafayette, Colo., an Agile consultant and trainer. If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on. Companies make exceptions to their no-sitting rules if a worker is sick, injured or pregnant—but usually not for workers outside the office telecommuting on Skype.

According to the WSJ piece, agile lifecycle management company VersionOne surveyed 6,042 tech employees worldwide and “found that 78 percent held daily stand-up-meetings,” which shows how commonplace these types of meetings have become for us.

For a good rundown on how a proper daily meeting should take place, you should read Steve Berczuk's post, "To Scrum, Prepare," which ran a few years back here on TechWell. In the post, Steve explains how to effectively host a meeting.

From "To Scrum, Prepare:"

But just having everyone in the room doesn't make for an effective, focused scrum. You need to be be prepared. Once I was on a team where the scrums started going off track. They took longer. People's updates were often "I don't remember what I did yesterday," or they became long unfocused rambles that didn't convey much information.  I suggested that we all take a few minutes before Scrum to organize our thoughts. This got a lot of resistance. "It feels like a pre-meeting meeting, and with Scrum we're supposed to spend less time in meetings."

While Daily Scrum's are meant to be lightweight, it's respectful of everyone else's time to think about what 's worth sharing with the team. Most days you might just be working on one thing, in which case a quick glance at the Scrum board might be enough. But if you want to do what's best for your team, why not take 2 minutes before Scrum (either in the morning, or even the day before) jotting down what you want to share with the team that addresses the questions:

Now, the question I have for all of you is when will the rest of the business world follow in our footsteps?