13 May 2024 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 Antarctica, 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 to take an update on the tasks performed throughout the week.
The development team and other departments like QA and Infra had only one opportunity to understand the tasks to be performed in the week and even to bring 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:
- There was no accountability throughout the week until it was Friday for the status of various tasks that were defined on Monday.
- No structure or hierarchy was followed while giving task updates. There were no team wise updates and you wouldn't understand the dependencies very easily because majority of the lot worked in isolation.
- There were hardly any follow-up questions with the PM or with the other members of the team, as the work was remote and there were no defined meetings for the same.
- There was no proper understanding of the actual progress of the project as the tasks were not broken down in terms of milestones, and so during the different project phases, there was no clarity mid-project on the progress until something was entirely completed.
Antarctica Global: The Windows
How we changed our approach
As I started learning about the work culture and individual capacity of every member, as well as the sense of responsibility and commitment that each member had for the on-going projects, and studying the old process of running the different projects thoroughly, it became very clear to me that in order to make the management process of the organisation more efficient, it was very important to interact with the team on a daily basis.
I therefore started by scheduling daily stand-up meetings, and the results blew my mind.
I also realised that, as important as the daily stand-up meetings were, we also had to start running daily scrums at the end of the day in order to take updates on the tasks assigned at the start of the day on the stand-up calls. This brought an incredible level of productivity to the different teams as they now had more clarity and the entire process was more transparent.
To improve progress tracking, we also started breaking down all projects and monitoring them on a weekly basis (sprints). This change reduced sprint duration from a month to a week, enabling us to define weekly milestones and proactively identify any projects veering off track. This approach allowed us to be more transparent and keep a better control of the project at any given time.
How the new process helped Antarctica stakeholders:
- It is 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.
- It is 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 (sprints), which makes it easier to plan and organise the 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.
- 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 workings of the organisation. We have completed and delivered multiple projects perfectly on schedule, back-to-back. This has also resulted in improved team morale, as this process gives clarity to everyone and removes any kind of insecurity and confusion related to work.
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# productmanagement
# scrummaster
# scrummethods
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By Ebrahim Kothari
Product Manager
Antarctica is a software concept, design and development company that builds easy to use applications and architects complex to build ecosystems. We do it for people who believe just like us that fighting climate change isn’t an option, it is our generation’s utmost duty.
So we made it simple: the things we do, the products we build, the services we render, must either protect our mothers or protect Mother Nature. Said otherwise, our mission is to either save lives or save Life, penguins included.
We are the good side of technology. We are Antarctica.
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