other in an identical format. The three questions answered are the same as in the individual stand-up meetings:
- How are all the teams progressing?
- What are the cross-team impediments?
- Who is taking the actions to remove them?
The principle of a coordinating stand-up meeting can be repeated to address large numbers of teams where representatives of ‘teams of teams' report on the progress of the ‘teams of teams.' These meetings typically coordinate efforts of teams that have no common ground. For example, all the IT delivery teams have a daily coordinating stand-up, as do the training teams, finance teams, pre-production teams, and soon. On a weekly schedule (or daily if it is late in the release cycle), representatives of each team meet to report progress, plans and impediments.
Conclusion
In short, it is possible to apply the ‘barely sufficient' principles of agile methods to multi-team, long-term projects. Added levels of planning are not artificial or time consuming and help focus the right group of people on the product with the right level of detail. This practice avoids spending large amounts of time and money before the actual delivery of features begins. When any member of the team desires to hang on to details of work specification and planning, then agile implementation is on its way back to waterfall methods.
About the author: With more than 20 years of software project management and IT expertise, Hubert Smits has helped hundreds of software team members successfully transition dozens of projects to agile and lean practices. In doing so, he has also coached the executive management team who must deliver business value through their teams' agile adoption. Born in the Netherlands, Hubert is an Agile Coach for Rally Software, a Certified Scrum Trainer and a frequent speaker at industry events.
[1] Moore, McKenna, Crossing the Chasm; Capstone Publishing, 1999.
[2] Highsmith, Agile Project Management; Addison-Wesley,2004.
[3] Tabaka, Collaboration Explained; Addison Wesley,2006.
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