Two-week cycles without the status meeting
We cancelled our Friday status meeting a year ago. Here is what replaced it, and why the cycle report is only half of the answer.
A year ago we had a Friday meeting where each team lead read out what their team had done. It took an hour, and everyone in it already knew most of what they heard. We cancelled it, and nothing broke.
What replaced it
Three things, none of them a meeting. Each issue's status comes from its pull request, so the board is right without anyone touching it. Each project gets a short written update on Thursday from the person who leads it. And each cycle ends with a report that Tern writes for us.
- Status from code, not from people
- Updates written by the person closest to the work
- A report at the end of every cycle, posted where the team already reads
The report is only half of it
The report tells you what happened. It does not tell you why the payments migration slipped twice. That is what the Thursday update is for, and it only works if it is short, honest and written by one person.
“If the update takes more than five minutes to write, the project is too big or the update is too long.”
Try it for one cycle
Cancel the meeting for one cycle and read the report instead. If you miss the meeting, bring it back. We have not.