Where Afternoon Standups Go Wrong
Most teams are familiar with the morning standup, or the classic scrum ritual that gives teams the opportunity to sync up and plan their work for the day. For many teams, the morning standup is the bread and butter of their scrum process.
But every once in a awhile a team tries to move their standup to the afternoon. The reasons always sound legitimate:
"Not everyone gets here at the same time, so we'll just hold our standup in the afternoon. That way everyone can attend."
or
"Mornings are when we're most productive...we don't want to interrupt that with another meeting. Let's just have the standup in the afternoon."
As valid as these reasons sound afternoon standups have a tendency to be less useful than morning standups, but the reasons why aren't always clear. Let's take a look at why.
The Ritual Suffers
Morning standups create a nice ritual for your team. Everyone trickles by 9 o'clock, checks their email, and gets their morning cup of joe. But, at 9:30 everyone filters into the team room and it's time for the standup. After a quick standup the team starts their day for real. The 9:30 standup is the signal for the day to start.
On the other hand, even though afternoon standups are still scheduled at the same time every they are much less likely to start at the same time every day. This is because by the afternoon the day is much more likely to have gone awry. Maybe tasks have taken longer than expected so not everyone is ready. Perhaps a fire has much of the team too distracted to make the original time. Or, even if all of the team is available, maybe other meetings outside of the team have ran long and the team's normal meeting space isn't available. Now the team has to hustle to find a space that can accommodate them for their already late standup.
Standups Last Longer
No one likes a long standup. In fact, one of the most common complaints from new scrum teams is
"Our standups always last at least 45 minutes."
All standups are susceptible to this but afternoon standups are particularly so.
Think of how you feel in the morning: You're energized for the day, you've had a fresh cup of coffee, and you're ready to tackle that sticky problem from yesterday.
Now, think of how you usually feel in the afternoon: You've just had lunch. You've already been at work for 5 hours, and all you want is a reason to sit down and take a break for a bit. The afternoon standup is that reason.
And, once everyone has sat down, the standup begins to drag.
Your New Status Meeting
But, the most insidious problem of all with afternoon standups is much more subtle.
Standups should have two goals...
Identify blockers so they can be brought to light and removed.
Allow the team to sync up and plan their work for the day.
Nowhere in that list is a goal for the team to report the status of their current work in progress. That's not the purpose of the standup...that's the purpose of the scrum board.
Morning standups are very conducive to these goals since they encourage the team to identify blockers early in the day and to synchronize the day's work before they get started on the wrong path.
But afternoon standups share neither of these traits. Although the same blockers might exist in the afternoon as they did in the morning, team members are less likely to bring them to light since they may mistakenly believe they're close to solving them. Even if they do, the other team members are likely too deep into their own tasks to volunteer much help. In addition, since the individual team members have already started their work for the day there's no opportunity to synchronize the work as a team...everything has already begun.
With both of these options off of the table only one thing is left to talk about in an afternoon standup...status. When held in the afternoon the focus of the standup naturally shifts to what each team member has accomplished so far that day. Rather than providing the opportunity for the team to clear their own way and plan the day's work ahead, the standup simply devolves into yet another status meeting.
Try It and See
The differences between afternoon and morning standups are subtle but the results can vary dramatically. If your team is currently using afternoon standups and something just doesn't feel quite right then give morning standups a try. The difference may surprise you.