[RFC] Update Monitor:APM async standup questions
I'd like to get some feedback on some new questions for the async standup meetings:
Current Template
- How do you feel today?
- What did you do since {last_report_date}?
- What will you do today?
- Anything blocking your progress?
Suggested Template
- Are you facing any blockers requiring action from others?
- What are you aiming to accomplish by the end of the week?
- What will be your primary focus for today?
- Any personal tidbits you'd like to share?
Rationale
Overall I am wanting the standup to reflect a stronger bias toward action. I'm hoping this would help us derive more actionable items from reading the standup channel each day.
Are you facing any blockers that require action from others?
This, to me, seems like one of the most important questions to answer and read. Collaborating and helping each other should be top of mind each day as we begin. Consequently I've suggested it as the first question. Additionally, if a blocker doesn't need action from someone else, I don't know that it is really a blocker. This question should be the one that (when it shows up) should prompt team members into action.
What are you aiming to accomplish by the end of the week?
I'd like to bring more focus to how our daily actions drive us toward (or away from) our weekly goals. The aim is that this question would provide the broader context for our daily work as well as help us hold ourselves accountable to make sure we are scoping issues down to reasonable sizes and breaking things into smaller MRs wherever possible. It may happen that this answer stays the same throughout the week, this would mean things are progressing on schedule. Alternatively, seeing this answer change throughout the week is also okay. Maybe we got side tracked helping someone get unblocked. Maybe new blockers came up. The intention is not to have to justify our actions, but to keep a running record of how our work is progressing and/or evolving.
What will be your primary focus for today?
The hope is that this accomplishes a few things:
- Keeps the answer concise and helps team members get a sense of what your biggest deliverable is for the day
- Eliminate the pressure to account for your entire day. Trying to diligently communicate the full scope of your tasks for the day (meetings, code reviews, etc.) quickly becomes unweildy. Boiling this down to a primary task or two max could help give more quality insight into where the majority of our time will be spent. As an aside, it is okay if most of your day will be allocated to code reviews or meetings. That is an acceptable task for that day if it happens to be the case.
Any personal tidbits you'd like to share?
This is the one question I think should be more open ended. You might want to share how you feel, but you also might want to share a personal anecdote, family news, or a funny joke. Maybe you simply want to let the team know you'll be unavailable that afternoon - doctors appointment, babysitting, who knows...