7.8 Meetings

XP puts people over processes. We don’t like wasting time in group meetings. Formal meetings are limited to planning and what we call, stand-up meetings.

A stand-up meeting occurs daily, usually in the morning. The meetings are held standing up, hence the name. Standing helps limit the meeting’s duration. The content of a stand-up is an-nouncements and a brief status report from all team members. As an alternative to stand-ups, you might consider status meet-ings held over lunch once or twice a week. Lunch is a more relaxed way than a stand-up to make announcements and discuss what you are working on. The status lunch also gives the team a chance to socialize.

The company should pay for the meal. At one company we hired an Italian cook to prepare family-style meals three times a week. Nobody was late to lunch when Dina was cooking!

7.9 Show Your Stuff

Up till now, being the tracker may not seem like a lot of fun. However, part of the tracker’s job is encouraging people to celebrate their successes as well as helping out with failures. Everybody wants to be praised for their work. The tracker should encourage people to show off their completed work to the entire team. Success is contagious. When you see the excitement from a sweet demo, you’ll be motivated to work that much harder so you can demo your cool stuff.

Demonstrations are great way to maintain team spirit and momentum. Even a short e-mail explaining your result is enough. For example, you introduce a cache and improve the performance by 10 times. Send out a graph containing the performance test comparison.

The tracker should organize demonstrations if they don’t come about naturally. Sometimes team members are reticent to show their work. Weekly demonstrations are a good way to ensure everybody is praised for their accomplishments. Before or after lunch are good times for demos (see sidebar).



	7.8 Meetings XP puts people over processes. We don’t like wasting time in group meetings. Formal meetings are limited to planning and what we call, stand-up meetings. A stand-up meeting occurs daily, usually in the morning. The meetings are held standing up, hence the name. Standing helps limit the meeting’s duration. The content of a stand-up is an-nouncements and a brief status report from all team members. As an alternative to stand-ups, you might consider status meet-ings held over lunch once or twice a week. Lunch is a more relaxed way than a stand-up to make announcements and discuss what you are working on. The status lunch also gives the team a chance to socialize. The company should pay for the meal. At one company we hired an Italian cook to prepare family-style meals three times a week. Nobody was late to lunch when Dina was cooking!

	7.9 Show Your Stuff

	Up till now, being the tracker may not seem like a lot of fun. However, part of the tracker’s job is encouraging people to celebrate their successes as well as helping out with failures. Everybody wants to be praised for their work. The tracker should encourage people to show off their completed work to the entire team. Success is contagious. When you see the excitement from a sweet demo, you’ll be motivated to work that much harder so you can demo your cool stuff. Demonstrations are great way to maintain team spirit and momentum. Even a short e-mail explaining your result is enough. For example, you introduce a cache and improve the performance by 10 times. Send out a graph containing the performance test comparison. The tracker should organize demonstrations if they don’t come about naturally. Sometimes team members are reticent to show their work. Weekly demonstrations are a good way to ensure everybody is praised for their accomplishments. Before or after lunch are good times for demos (see sidebar). Copyright © 2004 Robert Nagler 55 All rights reserved nagler@extremeperl.org