The Daily Scrum or Morning Meeting

A scrum or morning meeting is the best way to get control of a development process. Having it in the morning seems like the most natural part of the day for everyone to synchronize, obviously, before everyone has started working. Not first thing in the morning because everyone needs time to have some breakfast, review new email, read the news, and get settled in. About a half-hour should do it. The other good thing about having it in the morning is to ensure that everyone gets to work on time, which gets to the essence of how a scrum works - peer pressure. When someone is late to the meeting, it is not just clear to their manager, but to the whole team. So they are not letting their manager down, they are letting the team down.

During the meeting, each member of the team goes over what they have accomplished since the day before and what they are working on. According to strict principles, the meeting is not supposed to become a status meeting run by the project manager (technically the role is supposed to be called a scrum master, but I don't like that name). Personally I like having the project manager run the meeting. I prefer the direction that it gives. And you still end up with the peer pressure because everyone is listening.

Finance company uses daily scrum

In an article on BlackRock, the biggest asset manager in the world with $3 trillion under management, it was revealed that one of their management techniques for keeping the company in-sync and feeling "small" is to have a mandatory, daily morning meeting at 8am. Everyone involved gives short one-minute presentations seemingly on whatever they are working on. The article doesn't get into specifics about the meeting, but it sounds very similar to a daily scrum. Check out the article in Fortune.