Daily Standup

The Daily Standup used in the Kanban Framework is a little different from the Daily Scrums used in Scrum, in that, they tend to focus on flow and referenced the Card Wall.

Generally, if a team hold their Daily Standup meeting at their Card Wall then the tasks will naturally be updated as well as providing a context for the coordination discussions.

Walking The Wall

One approach that is quite common is to "Walk The Wall" where a facilitator for the team references each ticket in turn on the Card Wall working backwards with particular attention paid to work items that are blocked or seem to be static and not moving.

The team volunteer an update and coordinate their activities as the cards are referenced and provide a stimulus for quick conversation.

Practical Tips

Self Organizing	Ideally it would be great if the teams were able to hold their Daily Standups and contribute in a self organizing manner without the use of a facilitator. A facilitator may be useful initially to help get a team off the ground with new Agile techniques and practices, and convey new knowledge, but they should only be used as a temporary measure and look to foster enough confidence in the teams to run these forums themselves.
Enhance Context	The Daily Standups are usually best done close to a task board or card wall which provides reminders and cues as to where the work is, and provides a deeper understanding and context for the standups.
After Party	During the Daily Standups, there may be the tendency to get stuck into the detail and start to derive solutions. If a Daily Standup is consistently overrunning and is often derailed or dominated by solutioning discussions, then it may be better to defer these discussions until after the Daily Standup, which allows for a quick get together to coordinate the teams' efforts and then releases those that are not interested in the solutioning to do something else more productive instead. Similarly, those that are interested in the detail can get into the discussion unconstrained and have a great conversation. These post Daily Standup informal conversations are sometimes termed as the “after party”.
Fluid Discussion	For more experienced teams the "Walk the Wall" approach may be superseded by a more general conversation that pays particular attention to: work items which the team feel are the weakest and need attention work items that have been stalling on the board for a number of days work items that are explicitly blocked and more effort is needed to get some traction
Metrics	During the Daily Standup it can be useful to update the metrics such as the Cumulative Flow Diagram or Control Chart for example, if they are being used. This can then factor into the conversation with the team and influence their game plan for the day.

See Also

• Kanban Framework

References

1. Kanban, Successful Evolutionary Change For Your Technology Business, Anderson D. J., 2013