The necessity of a daily stand-up.

I'm not Certified Scrum Master. I'm not an experienced project manager. I haven't even officially led any team. And honestly other than a short few months at my last place of employment I never really even practiced all-out-scrum.

One thing we did do was a daily stand-up. This daily stand-up was what we called scrum and for the most part that is what scrum is around here. Well here at my new place (the government contract) there are myths of scrum floating around but there is no physical manifestation of it whatsoever. Heck, I had a fellow developer tell me today that their team actaully has a daily stand-up, but he sorta said it through a smile and didn't make eye contact.

What's the big deal? That's probably what you're thinking.

Let me explain.

I've been on-site and billable for about 3 weeks now. I haven't seen any sort of project plan whatsoever. I haven't been given any idea of what our current short-term (iteration) goal is. All I've been told is that there is a trunk and two branches that are being worked on and we plan to get both of the branches merged back into the head.... big freakin' deal.

I'm lost. I've got no direction and no idea what direction the team is going much less any form of idea of WHO is my TEAM in the first place...

And all that to say if they only had some sort of daily stand-up, call it scrum if it makes you feel at home, but some sort of regular, daily, brief progress meeting to give people (especially the new guy) some inkling of an idea of what the heck is going on.

Like I said, I'm no CSM, but I'm going to try and get some form of daily stand-up going. Even if it's just with my leads. And who knows, maybe I'll end up taking it further and getting a backlog defined and prioritized... but that is for another post.

Until next time
Les