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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas, and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. One thing I want to share with you that I use all the time, even for non-Agile projects, is the concept of the Daily Scrum. A Daily Scrum is short, really short, no more than a 15-minute meeting, and I really like that the team stands up. It's not a seated meeting; there is no presentation, there is no slide deck, there is no report, there is no paper where the team has this short, focused meeting, and every team member shares what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and any obstacles they are facing. The aim is to keep the team aligned with strong transparency and allow for quick identification of issues and problems. And why is it critical for me? Because I see five benefits that any of you can get tomorrow by doing the Daily Scrum. One is improved communication, instead of waiting two weeks or three weeks to have a formal meeting. And most of the time, these meetings are when 1 or 2 people talk, and most of the people are silent listening.
The daily Scrum requires that team members communicate openly and regularly, and it keeps everyone on the same page. So we avoid the silos. Even in non-agile projects, these touchpoints allow better synchronization and awareness of what every single member of my team is working on.
And, of course, before I go to two. Of course, you may ask me, Ricardo, but if you are doing a construction project, then you have 2000 people. How do you do a daily scrum with 2000 people? The answer is you don't do a daily scrum with 2000 people. The daily scrum is something that if you are managing a project like this one, you need to stimulate the team members to do that if there are more working teams. For example, let's suppose you are doing a construction project, okay? So you can take everybody working on the woodwork service. Okay. Let's suppose you have ten people doing the woodwork area of your project. They can do their Daily Scrum, where they will say, okay, I was preparing this door, I was preparing this window, I had a problem on this. And maybe they can find and communicate to find the solutions and improve the results. So this is what I'm talking about here. It's not that a huge project will have one daily scrum with everybody. No, it's several Daily Scrums with this small team. The second thing we want to see as a benefit of using that is early problem detection. If you remember one podcast I recorded recently, I spoke about small risks that create big damage in your project because, you know, you just don't pay attention to that.
What is the aim here? It's early problem detection I want to detect a problem before it becomes a big problem, because it's much easier to sort out and to find. And if I meet every day before the problem becomes gigantic, I can act, and I can decide and discuss. So it's something like, if I miss today, tomorrow, I have another one. Okay. Third, enhance accountability. Why? Because everybody is saying, today I'm planning to do this. Today, I will test this, and I will do it in a different way. And then tomorrow, we expect that this person will say, I tried it yesterday, and it didn't work, or I tried it yesterday. So you improve accountability because there is pressure for people to update on that the next day because from one day to another, people don't forget that, okay? Number four is faster decision-making. What we want as we detect problems earlier, we want to decide faster. So, these regular meetings, they encourage rapid decision-making. So, instead of waiting one week, you decide on a daily basis, and these decisions can, most of the time, be real-time decisions. So, for example, if you are facing a problem with the quality of the wood going again on the woodworking, you can quickly decide on that and see what we can do today and not next week. And this drives me to the fifth benefit, which is increased focus and momentum.
Remember, momentum is super, super important. You need to keep the team focused. It's not. For example, sometimes it's great to have the big picture that, for example, this construction work is building a new mall, or it's building a new industrial plant. But okay, this is fantastic to give a sense of direction, but what is important is the short-term goals. So in order to get that mall ready in two years, what do I need to get ready today? This creates a motivation that energizes. This is why I don't like to do this meeting sitting at a table. No, I want to do it fast. Really, really fast. And of course, you may say Ricardo, but I have 3 or 4 Daily Scrums because, for example, I'm coordinating work, and they have 3 or 4 different groups. Yes, but if each of these meetings is five minutes, then we are talking about 20 minutes. Twenty minutes, if you have a formal meeting, is just the warm-up and report of this meeting, right? This first 20 minutes is just taking coffee, waiting for people to see it, turning on the computer, turning on the projector to show, you know, this is fast, this is quick. You can do it in a corridor. People can take a notepad, for example, or a phone to register their decisions and what they want to do.
And that day, of course, I'm not saying that you will stop doing the other meetings, but these meetings, these 3 to 5 minutes, are great. For example, I do this even with my personal projects. For example, I'm planning a new online course, or I'm planning a new book or a new article. I do this kind of checking for two, three, five minutes. Just saying. What are you planning to do today? What am I planning? What are the issues? And this, okay! Talk to you tomorrow. So this was the way, for example, how we built the I PM certification. We did this check-in with the team pretty much every single day. And it was a very fast-paced development, so I just wanted to give you an idea. So always think about this because it can benefit you to listen to this podcast tomorrow, not next year, not next month, but tomorrow. So we start doing this tomorrow. There is a bunch of things explaining about the Daily Scrum for you on the web. Just start saying, okay, what is the plan for today? What happened yesterday? Let's move on. This will improve, and it will be a key component for you to motivate people and keep them extremely aligned with your project goals. Think about that, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
