Dailies & working from home: a real challenge

Even before the pandemic, stand ups at the office tended to turn in these routinary, repetitive 15 minutes. At that time, to keep a positive vibe, we passed a ball to take turns to speak, making jokes, sometimes it ‘woke up’ someone who was sleepy, sometimes we did it outside at the terrace or while eating breakfast in a coffee shop. Now that working from home is a must, keeping a productive daily meet is another thing that must adapt to the new normal.

Let’s start by reviewing what daylies are for. Dailys are a -of course- daily meeting with the team, with one only objective: To know where are we standing in the project. It have to be early in the morning, and with the presence of the whole team, everyone speaks for no more than one minute, enough to explain what you did yesterday, what are you planning to do today and is something/someone blocking you?

Even though this seems very simple, is very usual people take more time than they should at their turn to talk, and this is particularly more common in an online team. It may be because we feel the need to justify what we have been doing, or maybe because we are not next to our partner anymore to ask a quick question, so we make the mistake to drop it at the dailys to find an answer.

So to help the team and yourself to keep focus at dailies try answer these questions:

• What did I accomplished yesterday?
• What I want to accomplished today?
• What is blocking me to accomplish it?

And a few tips:

• Lead with example.
• Reinforce the message to the team that you trust them and they dont have to show they are actually working.
• If someone has a doubt, suggest to schedule an appointment after de daily to talk about it.
• Respect times, maybe use a timer if people keep failing at this.