by Ted Eytan, on 22 Dec 2006 05:40 pm
The Journey
Standup
Lee’s asked me to mind things over the holidays; fortunately, there’s a lot going on.
I would say the most important thing I experienced this week would be the “standup.” This is the daily 15 minute meeting that one of the teams I serve is now having as part of their transition to Agile development. It’s situated around the visual display that they created around a major development project. The team is facilitated in going through all of the development, testing, and approval tasks, split up in to manageable pieces, to complete this project. It honestly reminds me of hospital rounds, in its measured review of each part of the project and team members’ contribution to it. During the standup, developers make arrangement to be available to help others whose tasks were up, based on what needs work. Quality Assurance has become a visible focus. I’ve been trained from the beginning that the QA team is to be respected; this process makes that clear to everyone involved. QA is visible throughout the work.
The team has been doing this for a few weeks. What’s interesting about it to all of us is that their visual display is in a very well trafficked area of our building. This serves the desire of efficiency for the project, and also for creating curiosity around a “new” way to do things by other teams. Wheels are turning, moving us forward.
If I ever want to know how this project is progressing, I really don’t have to find someone. I can just walk in a certain part of the building. If I ever hear or feel that there’s something that needs higher priority, I can do the same, to understand what is already prioritized, and manage my energy. Knowing what is being done is the antidote for asking for something else to be done!
The best part of the whole thing for me is that this team created this system on their own after receiving training. There is now one more fountain of knowledge that I and others can draw from when we connect their innovations to others’ who we work with. I will say “Not invented here, but we’re going to do it anyway.”
Back to the hospital rounding analogy, I wondered by we don’t have standups in the outpatient setting, but only in the inpatient setting. Maybe it is because inpatient care is an experience of intensely focused, acute interventions, where team functioning on a daily basis has large impacts on a patient’s care. Why wouldn’t an outpatient team also benefit from this focus and organization and enjoy what they do because of it? More ideas for integrating LEAN into the content of all health care….