Enhancing Daily Stand-ups with Conversational AI
Daily stand-ups are a fundamental aspect of Agile methodology, providing a platform for team members to share updates, discuss roadblocks, and plan their day. They can also feel very redundant and unnecessary for mature teams that maintain meticulous documentation. Are there other ways to achieve the notion of a daily huddle without the unnecessary burden of a standing meeting? Let’s investigate.
Conversational AI: Automate your Daily Stand Up
There are many options to think about when automating your daily stand up. This interaction is key for the team to make progress and achieve their sprint goals. Reducing face to face integration, even remotely will negatively impact team collaboration. Conversational AI is one method to achieve obtaining the same information you would in a traditional stand-up only asynchronously.
Standuply.com – Daily Stand Up Automation with Slack
After a quick 5 minute google search of options (there are a few) I selected Standuply.com. I registered for an account and after verifying my e-mail address I entered the Home screen and Selected -> Create First Report. The tool is very intuitive and I had this whole platform running in about 30 minutes.
Here you have the option of selecting the report / ceremony you would like to automate. Future posts will show how to automate other agile ceremonies such as Backlog Refinement, Sprint Retrospective and Sprint Planning.
Select -> Classic Standup Report
Next you will need to integrate with your communication system of choice. Standuply.com offers Slack and Teams, for the purposes of this blog post I created a free Slack.com account .
The Respondents & Requests section allows you to customize the standard daily huddle questions or add any specific questions you may have for the team that day.
Results Delivery will give you the option to customize the users, channel or shared channels you would like the report to display after users complete the automated daily stand up.
You can test your configuration and run the report ad-hoc by clicking the gear at the top right of the Stand Up report you created and Selecting -> Run Report Now
I used the above method to test my report. The chatbot will prompt the designated users at your specified timeframe with the questions you prompted. Each question will appear one by one. Responses are recorded back to the report owner and public channel if applicable.
Here is the view from the public channel where the full team updates would display privately to the team channel.
This report will continue to generate based on the settings configured and your team will no longer need standing 15 minute meetings. I do recommend keeping the time allotted a few times a week to address roadblocks if needed.
Why is this important?
You may be wondering why setting up a chat bot or even conducting a daily stand up is valuable at all at this point. My point to readers is that this simple tool can be used to create time for you and your organization that may not have been there before. Meetings are forcing us to switch contexts more than ever. Simple automations like this could save you and your organization time and increase employee satisfaction.
Time Waste Calculator per team member:
15 Minutes per day per team member -> 75 Minutes per week -> ~5 hours per month -> 55 hours of employee time per year ($2750)
Time Waste Calculator per team (8 total team members):
2 hours per day per team member -> 10 hours per week -> ~40 hours per month -> 160 hours of employee time per year ($22,000)
Did you find this article helpful? If so please comment below as I am trying to gauge what type of content will be MOST valuable for the audience. Have an idea or tool you want me to investigate? Comment below.