Example of Strategic Pattern:
Pattern:
Daily Update meeting
Brief Description :
A quick daily internal team meeting is held just as a means to elicit progress update from each of the team members, and to decide if further meetings in the day are required to deal with issues.
WHAT
- A daily stand up update meeting is an example of a strategic communication pattern. In this meeting, the team members all stand in a circle and one by one, each one gives a short update of the progress that has been made since the previous day or the issues identified. Each member has to speak, and has to keep it short.
- The communication artifact here is abstract here, and just the simple medium of speech is used. Typically minutes or notes would not be taken.
Context :
WHEN Daily team update meetings are usually conducted where teams are co located, and there are strict time lines to adhere to, thereby the need for more active monitoring of progress or lack thereof.
WHO Entire internal team. Either the team would have a manager or would be a self managed team. As the communication artifact here is speech, it is typically meant for the manager(if any) to hear.
Style :
HOW
- The style of the meeting is intentionally kept very informal, with no communication record keeping involved.
- This type of daily update stand up meeting is a pattern that is followed to have very frequent updates, without taking up a lot of unnecessary time of the team members. It is also a means for the entire team to meet and identify any major issues that might need attention.
- Everyone is asked to stand during the meeting to prevent the meeting for dragging on too long, and standing gives everyone incentive to be quick and end the meeting soon.
Goals :
WHY The major goal of conducting daily team meetings is to track and encourage progress.
Benefits Analysis :
- As everyone is expected to speak, most team members feels obliged to have made some progress to have something to report, perhaps to save themselves from the embarrassment of not having a proper update.
- Any issues that are identified in the team can be appropriately prioritized within a day and if necessary, a follow up meeting can be organized only with concerned members to decide whether more attention and resources need to be diverted to the issue.
- The stand-up meeting helps the team stay focused and alert, and everyone in the team gets an idea of how the other parts of the project are coming along.
- As everyone is kept standing, each member is usually conscious of not giving unnecessarily long updates for the sake of not keeping everyone standing uncomfortably for long.
Risks :
- Some team members might consider it an unnecessary waste of time to meet every morning.
- And the meetings might seem to feel repetitive during phases of low progress or low activity.
- Sometimes, enforcing attendance for daily meetings becomes an issue, specially in teams that operate during different hours and/or are remotely located.
Example:
A daily stand up update meeting as part of SCRUM is an example of a strategic communication pattern. In this meeting, the team members all stand in a circle and one by one, each one gives a short update of the progress that has been made since the previous day or the issues identified. Each member has to speak, and has to keep it short.