Hi Folks,

In this post I discuss a great tool for keeping software development teams accountable. It’s called the Stand-up summary.

How does it work?

In teams that adopt Agile methodology, it’s common to have daily stand-up meetings where developers discuss what they have worked on, what they plan to work on, etc.
A stand-up summary is a short summary of the action points for each member (usually software developers) in the team, saying what they plan to work on that day.

This summary can be written by the facilitator for the meeting and posted onto a shared location, easily accessible by all members of the team, e.g. the team group chat (think of MS Teams, Slack, etc.), shortly after the meeting ends.

What are the advantages of using stand-up summaries?

• It helps to keep each team member focused on their goals for the day and minimise distractions.
• It gives visibility to the rest of the team so that the team leader can more easily help each member to make sure the entire team meets its goals.
• It helps gives visibility of the team’s daily goals to other stakeholders who may not necessarily be the software developers themselves.
• It helps keep each team member accountable. Knowing that one’s goals has been posted on to the team group chat motivates one to strive to fulfil the goals promptly.

That’s all for now. Till next time, happy software development.