Daily Dashboard Meeting

Daily Dashboard meeting is the “Standup” meeting for the team to plan and to track the progress being made. This meeting typically held in the same location and at the same time each day. It’s Ideal to run the daily meeting in the morning as they help set the context for the coming day's work. The daily meetings are strictly time boxed, between 15to 20 minutes. The purpose of the meeting is synchronization and no problem solving and lengthy discussions. But the plan for solving the issue is discussed here with an action items and the action items are dealt outside the meeting.

There are several goals for a daily stand-up meeting:

1. To surface any issues or situations that may prevent deliverable from being completed as planned

2. Enable to track the status of the project

3. To reinforce focus on the priorities

4. Setting short term goal for the team

5. Helps to identify the risks and issues

6. To figure out the dependencies well in advance

7. Help People to connect and share information on what everyone is doing

8. Improves individual’s planning skills: Every team member should plan their tasks for the entire week by considering the facts including effort, dependencies, issues and milestone. This helps every team member to improve their planning skills.

9. Develop stage speaking skills: Team members are assigned as a meeting owner for the day and rated on daily basis. It gives them the opportunity to confidently speak in front of the stage and improve their communication skills.

A typical Daily Dash Board meeting runs from 15-20 minutes.

Since the meeting runs only for 15 to 20 minutes, it make sure that the team members prepare well before the meeting and help them communicate better by providing concise, clear and articulated status. During the meeting, the key action items are noted on the board, with due date and owner that will be tracked on daily basis.

The Daily stand-up meeting is more like team building exercises; effective teams are built by communicating regularly, working and tracking the status. The obstacles are shared and the team members help each. The underline long term goal of daily meeting is to create an autonomous or self-managing team.

Finally, the stand-up are more attentive than a meeting that makes it more effective and efficient.

"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing, it's when you've had everything to do and you've done it!" --Margaret Thatcher

Power of Decision Making!!!

Most of us would have felt at least @ some point of time in our lift about the wrong decisions made. But Is there a wrong decision?.

No, there is not. All decisions are right when you take the decision. You believe that the decision you have taken will yield the expected result. If you can predict that the decision you have taken will go wrong, then you will not have decided to go with it, rather you will take other decisions. So No decision is wrong. Feeling Good. Isn’t it?.

The decision taking happened before the event occurs. No decision is wrong unless and until you see the results of your decision not yielding what you wanted. Does it mean that all the decision I take will go right. No I wouldn’t. Then how do I take a right decision.

Is there a right decision?.

There is no “Right” or “Wrong”, rather it is the probability of the decision results. Instead of saying a right decision, say, the high probability decision for yielding the desired result.

Now figure out how you can increase the probability to yield the desired result. The decisions taken based on the visible parameters will have less probability compare to the decision taken considering even the hidden parameter.

How Do I know the hidden parameters?

You are walking into a shop to buy a shirt, you have seen multiple brands, and wanted to decide on one. To decide, you would ask questions like, 1. Does it have a warranty? 2. Why the cost is high when you get the same quality from other brans for lesser price 3. Will it face after the first wash, 4. Do you have discounts on the price?. If you are satisfied with the answer, you would buy the shirt. But after coming home, if you open the shirt, there can be damage or the threads were overlapping. Now you have to go back to the shop and exchange it and at times you can’t. This is a mere rework that takes extra effort, your time and money (fuel to go there) to go to the shop again.

So what is missing?. You haven’t considered the hidden parameter while taking the decision. Incase if you have asked is there a damage?. Can I open it and See it?. The shopkeeper would have either said yes or even would have said no, but after billing you can check it before you can leave home. So how do I figure out the hidden parameter?

One technique which I found efficient is “10 no focus questions”. Before you take any decision, you must ask 10 questions around the subject. It can be anything, no constraints, no focus, it can be any 10 question related to the decision. You can easily figure out first 3 to 4 questions. Beyond that you will struggle figuring out what to ask. That would enable you to think. Which would intern help you to increase the probability of yielding positive results on your decision.

I welcome your comments.