“So this mornings standup is brought to you by this ethernet cable, because you guys are so connected”
I’ve seen numerous standup rituals over the years, from passing along a Rugby ball to signaling the end of stand ups by noting it was time for lunch. Some of the rituals help keep everyone engaged and focused on the central goal of the standup, coordinating the team and making everyone aware of potential obstacles. Recently I became a participant in a novel approach to leading off the daily standup.
One Monday our manager walked into the standup room carrying an ethernet cable. Mistakenly I took it as another standup totem. We regularly have used books, cups, or packages of black licorice as standup tokens. Today though he held up the cable as he began the started and opened up with a themed joke to lead off the startup. There were groans and chuckles, but little did we know for about the next month or so the stand ups would start with these humorous tokens and little sayings. The black licorice with a mention of ‘like black licorice we all were experts in different things’ or the day with a tack that ‘we were as sharp as this tack.’
It’s a very small thing, but it’s details like these that keep a process fresh. You really don’t want the daily standup to degenerate into a complete ritual, so mixing things up keeps people alert and thinking. Not a bad practice to try out sometime if you find your standup getting a bit stale. And for other ideas you can always check with Jason Yip’s exhaustive patterns on standups.