Daily meetings as active planning

Previously considered daily meetings only for scrum projects. But after playing a couple of times in the scrum, I came to the idea that the use of a short daily meeting is an integral part of team communications.

Without meetings, I find out about the problems much later and, accordingly, I react later, I have less time to react.
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In this article I want to make out the positive effect of daily meetings and describe how to do it, what is the use. I would not be surprised if, after writing this article, they will try to convince me and bring the minuses of this approach (in my case, this is one of the motivators for writing this article).

Current project plan

You need to start with the first integral element of the project - the project plan, which some colleagues neglect, or do not know how to use.



The main mistake that the PM makes when working with the plan is the lack of adjustments. I saw it more than once, and I myself was like this - when the plan is not adjusted until the end of the project. And until the very end of the project, the whole team is actively plowing on the idea of ​​catching up on a plan that has already lagged behind a month or even more.

The main mistake is that the plan - must be a tool leading in darkness and predicting the future. And for this, it must be regularly adjusted to changing realities.

The right tool for working with a plan.

Most often, managers refuse to make regular changes to the plan for several reasons: Difficulty, impossibility.

The impossibility is caused by the fact that the plan is not a tool, but rather a picture of Madonna, which was made once and put on display. This problem is caused by the lack of tools / software that will allow you to work with the plan most flexibly and conveniently. I have seen many managers who use the Google calendar as a plan, or some wild ruble Gantt charts developed in the back room, or even worse, a tracking system with its many statistics and metrics, such as the burndown chart and the like.

The difficulty is caused by improper planning and inability to work with the software in which the plan is executed.

When working with a plan, I myself use the program already proven over the years - Microsoft Project (the image above is one of it).

Be sure to plan adaptively, without specifying hard bindings and sequences due to the difficulty of keeping the plan up to date. When planning, I rely on tasks in automatic planning and with setting alignment by identifiers and without interruptions. This allows you to change the current task and automatically adjust all subsequent changes.

Now about the benefits of daily rallies or how I call this process myself - active planning.

The benefits of daily meetings

Previously, I received feedback from the team on the result of the work on the task, or through personal verification at different times of the day or week. Practice has shown that this approach eats up more time and brings chaos in the working schedule. In addition to personal chaos, I later learn about the difficulties or the postponement of tasks and, accordingly, less often make changes to the plan, which was the result of the porridge and the inconsistency of the plan with the realities.

By activating daily meetings every day at the appointed time, I disconnect from everything, turn on Microsoft Project and actively change my plan according to the testimony of the team.

Dialogue with the team is based on a scrum basis - what I did during the last working day, what I will do today and what difficulties I have.

Each team member lasts from a couple of seconds to several minutes to give an answer. It is enough for me to ask a couple of clarifying questions and within a couple of minutes to get information on the task over which the person is working and make changes to the plan.

Having a current plan every day gives me the following useful elements:
1) Every day it is clear what to do next and this information is relevant
2) The plan shows what will happen next and how we fit into the deadline and this information is relevant

In addition to the current plan, daily meetings have a positive impact on team communication and on motivation, team spirit.

Team spirit

Team spirit is influenced by feeling part of a team. All speak in turn and in a single format, it allows you to feel the same as others. The report is given by all, regardless of rank - signor developers, middle, junior, team leader, technical leader, architect. Report all who have a task in the plan. This additionally adds a sense of responsibility to the team, which entails an increase in motivation.

Motivation

The benefit of motivation lies in the fact that a person is primarily ashamed to the team for regular breakdowns of the plan for which he reports every day and looks like a white crow. I began to notice that many tasks began to end on the evening of the last day, and not “before dinner” on the current one. This is very important, because for almost every task it throws extra 4 hours when the developer didn’t finish working on the end of the working day, but he got into a mess and decides to finish it until noon the next day (after all, according to the old joke : “Today” - tomorrow.)

Communications

The benefit of communication is that the team receives the latest news and learns about problems before they occur. On a regular basis after the daily rally, the guys in the team self-organize and help each other for 10-30 minutes to solve problems and difficulties, which they never did without a direct request or request when the daily meetings were not used.

Stress resistance

In addition to problem information, daily meetings facilitate the emotional component in discussing problems. When you discuss problems every day, it’s easier for you to admit them than when you do it once a week. Relief in exhibiting their difficulties entails a reduction in the stress of work and again, it increases motivation and is not lazy and still does it so that the next day they don’t talk about their difficulties again.

Total

I will sum up. What do I get EVERY DAY by applying this approach:
1) Current project plan
2) List of difficulties in the team
3) Increased motivation to finish work on time
4) Relief and reduction of stress in the team when discussing problems
5) More relaxed and predictable work schedule of the manager

After applying the approach, I stopped to miss the deadlines for reasons of poor planning and achieved earlier completion of tasks due to earlier activity and resolution of difficulties. Now we do not fall into time due to lack of resources. But you must admit, this is a completely different story.

P.S. I actively conduct 4 projects and meetings are held from 9:30 to 11:00. Investing this part of the day for meetings, it turns out to have all that after 11:00 to solve problems and other project activities without distractions on “when you finish what you did”.