Stand-up meetings have always been one of the most important features of Agile working. It gives everyone to update on what they achieved the previous day and what the commit to achieve in the coming day. When people voice these achievements and commitments amongst their peers and stakeholders, it makes them more real and more likely to stick. Likewise the early identification of "blockers" and dependencies allows for swift action to be taken so as to not become a project hindrance or bottle-neck that will cause major problems later on.
But, at times like this with most people working from home and isolating themselves from neighbours and colleagues, the stand-up meeting can take on new responsibilities and become an even more valuable management tool. Isolation has always been a concern for those working remotely, hours or even days at a time, sitting in front of a screen squinting at your IDE or terminal program of choice can have a detrimental effect on our mental health and motivation. The tendency for technologists to sit and work on a problem until it is solved can mean losing track of time, forgetting to take breaks and further isolation.
Stand-ups are a great way to start the day and get everyone to their work-station to kick-start their day, they can be done perfectly well over Teams or Slack with the Scrum Master sharing their screen to discuss the Scrum Board or backlog. However, this meeting can be so much more in times like these and here are some tips for getting more from your stand-ups and maintaining team cohesion at a distance.
Run VT!
Nearly all collaborative platforms such as Teams, Slack or even Skype has screen-sharing and video capabilities, the first thing you can do is tell everyone that they need to join with video enabled. This seems like a small thing, but you would be surprised at the difference it makes. People will be much more social and interactive if they can see each other face-to-face. Social interaction is more than simply voice, non-verbal communication carries nuance and feeling and will make your stand-ups more fun and more valuable. It also has the side-effect of encouraging everyone to wash and get dressed before the call. Keeping a routine when working remotely is one of the most important things you can do, your team will feel better and be more productive if they start the day fresh.
Bantz
Uggh - I dislike that word, but keeping things light and humorous will make the Stand Up something people look forward to, rather than dread. Talk about your day, share TV shows you have binged, stories from home. Try and build a water-cooler like environment to get a little bit of chat going - this doesn't mean that meetings have to go on for much longer than usual, but a quick personal interaction can really help. It is also worth checking that everyone is on good form, you can throw in the odd bit of advise too - tell them all to phone their mother after Stand-up, for example.
Theme a Friday
We are going to be working remotely for some time yet and keeping things fresh is going to be tough after a month or so. Why not do something silly, just to keep spirits up? For example, set "Friday is hat day" where everyone on the call has to wear a hat - it is silly, but it breaks the ice and encourages chat.
Not Agile? Stand-up anyway
Even if you are not running an Agile process, or work in an industry where it is not popular Stand-up meetings can still hold a lot of value, particularly at times like these. Consider instituting a 15 minute meeting at 9am each day, it will pay dividends almost immediately.
Apps
If you are a Microsoft site, I am presuming that your organisation already uses Teams or similar, but if you are looking for a collaboration tool, I would recommend [Slack] (https://slack.com) - its free tier is probably all you will need, but for small teams the paid tiers are very reasonable.