Do stand-ups by person, not by ticket

Let's say you're in a software engineering team with daily stand ups and a sprint board with tickets up. How should you run the daily stand-ups?

It may be tempting to default to the classic "round-the-room" approach: going from person to person, asking each what they worked on yesterday, what they're doing today, and if they have any blockers. But in reality, this often does not work.

Instead, stand-ups should focus on the work itself: the tickets on the board, not the individuals in the meeting. Rather than structuring the conversation around each person, structure it instead around the flow of work. Start by looking at the board, moving from right to left across your workflow columns. Focus the discussion on the progress of the work items, not open-ended personal updates.

Why does this matter? Because it keeps priorities front and center. It aligns the team's attention on what's closest to delivering value, rather than on a scattered set of individual perspectives. It also reduces the risk of conversations veering off into tangents that don't serve the team's needs or goals.

Too often have I been in stand-ups where the vague open ended nature of questions has led to long, detailed updates about every minor task someone did the day before, in far too much detail. The update drifts off topic into areas of conversation that are ultimately irrelevant to the team. By focusing on the tickets in play, you naturally keep the conversation tighter, more relevant, and action-oriented.

Say if your board has columns for tickets like: Open, In Progress, In Peer Review, Releasable, Done.

1. Start at the right: the Releasable column. Ask whoever owns those tickets whether they're ready to be released. Is anything blocking deployment?
2. Move to Peer Review. For tickets waiting on review, check whether reviews have been completed. If not, prompt the assignee to request a review or assign a reviewer on the spot.
3. Finally look at the work in progress. Ask about blockers, progress, or whether the ticket is still on track.
4. Optionally at the end, look at the open column and discuss any changing priorities for what should be started next.

By following the flow of the board, you ensure that the stand-up is about moving work forward, not just providing a laundry list of activity. You emphasize the status of the team's shared goals rather than individual activities.

Naturally however, this whole blog post is only relevant if your team uses tickets and boards to prioritise work items. If not, another approach would be needed to maintain focus on whats important.