The best status update
In our last post, we talked about communication and why we think it’s important for our projects to be successful. But what are we talking about?
What is a status update?
At its core, a status update should answer these 3 questions to be effective:
- What did I do yesterday?
- What am I doing today?
- Do I have any blockers?
In most of our projects, we do a relaxed version of scrum. That is, we try to keep bureaucracy to its bare minimum. But something that we must do are daily standups. Daily standups are usually a meeting, but there are some cases where the client prefers async communication, so daily standups become text updates. In any case, these 3 questions are a must-answer.
Yesterday
It’s the most important question to answer, as it will shape what I’m doing today and if I have any blockers. The answer to this question is important because it will help track progress and re-calibrating expectations.
One should tell the rest of the team what task (or tasks) was working on and what is exactly its current status. Normally, one would tell the generalities of the task (I’m working on ticket #5, which is about X feature), and then tell the specifics (I’m looking at this model, working on this view, etc).
Being verbose will help the rest of the team to adjust their expectations of your work but also it will help one get help from someone that knows how to solve a specific problem.
Today
This question focuses on the near future, it’s about micro-planning, about what you are going to work on the rest of your day (until the next daily meeting).
It’s important to be precise and clear about the plan because it’s useful for the product owner to adjust expectations, and it’s also a good way to remind ourselves of what we were doing before the weekend and where we need to continue. If the next steps are not clear, then we have a problem we need to deal with as soon as possible.
Blockers
It’s the most important question to answer from the productivity and objectives perspective. If one is blocked by other people’s work, or if there are any dependencies, or if there’s missing (or unknown) information on a specific task, we should raise a concern and give visibility to the situation to prevent it from becoming a problem.
One should be clear on what is blocking or what is going to block shortly to prevent such blockers before they become a problem.
Why status updates are important?
Status updates are important to be transparent about the process, to adjust expectations, to detect and inform issues, and to organize the team. It’s about tracking progress. It’s not about control. It’s about collaboration.
Frequent status updates are the best way to help the team (dev team + customer) to be successful.
What is THE BEST status update?
The best status update is verbose and explicit. Detailed enough to give good information about our current situation but not extremely detailed enough to deviate from daily standup objectives. It also helps, being verbose and explicit by nature, to adjust expectations and detect issues. This will lead to organizing the team, sometimes, implicitly.