Learn Effective Project Management Strategies | TopLeft

How to run Effective Daily Huddles | TopLeft - Kanban boards for Connectwise and Autotask MSPs

Written by Wim Kerkhoff | May 8, 2017 7:00:00 AM

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Effective Daily Huddles

One of our own company goals for this quarter is implementing effective daily huddles as part of our Lean/Agile initiatives. Since daily huddles are valuable to any company (whether you use Connectwise or not, or Kanban or not), I thought I would share my research and what I’ve learned.

See attached (or click here for higher res) for a picture I took on Friday of our own team meeting around our CW Kanban on a large screen LCD monitor. We are seeing some great early results and have a lot more planned!

I found this article on how to run a kick ass daily standup. (Funnily enough –  everyone is sitting in their picture….) Here is my summary of the key DOs and DON’Ts:

DO:

  • Have a clear purpose: improve communication and project/service flow
  • Have dedicated time (we meet daily at 9:29am), space, and equipment. We use a Polycom speakerphone and 65″ LCD monitor, and are working on adding Zoom conferencing with wide angle webcam.
  • Have a good quarterback
  • Use visual aids to help with workflow, prioritization and accountability
  • Focus on the critical path to optimal flow, and how to optimize the bottlenecks and constraints
  • Reprioritize work loads
  • Huddle 3-5 times per week
  • Start and end on time

DON’T:

  • Waste precious time gettting remote people dialed in, people out of other meetings etc.
  • Have in-depth technical conversations
  • Simply do a status update “I did X yesterday and plan to do Y today”
  • Use out of date information. If using a physical or digital Kanban board, make sure it is always accurate and realtime
  • Ignore early warning signs that people’s time is being wasted
  • Micromanage the huddles… the team is supposed to own and run them!