Monday, May 19, 2008

Standup Haiku

When I mentioned that our daily development stand-up meetings were to long, one of the developers where I work (Ringside Networks) told me that my status was usually the longest so why should I object to the overall length of the meeting?

I thought, good point, but how to sharpen my status comments to a fine point and yet keep them informative and though provoking? The answer came to my mind immediately: Haiku. A simple form of poetry consisting of three lines of text where the first and last lines have only five syllables and the middle one seven. I must say this worked. Not only does everyone seem to listen more keenly but they ask the questions when I am done. Below is a sample, my status for today.

Am working on trails.
Seven and eight are done now,
Gadget server, Ready.

I am no poet, but the Haiku form sure did the trick.

Followup: This became far more popular than I thought and I have been asked to do this daily for a while (I don't know how long I can keep it up). They can be read at http://wire.tumblr.com/.

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