Alexandre Martins’ Blog

Last week, I went to a hospital in St Leonards, yes I was feeling sick, but now I’m fine. The thing is, while I was waiting to see the doctor my wife called my attention “Look, the doctors are having a stand-up meeting!!!!” (she’s been reading about agile…). It was awesome! There were about six doctors standing, forming a circle, each of them reporting its patients diagnostics and what was being done to treat them. After each report, all the other doctors were free to provide their own opinion about the case, and so they kept going, one by one. After about 20 minutes the meeting was done. Cool!! I couldn’t go home without asking the doctor about that. He said they started doing that about one year ago and since then, the stress level in the hospital has been decreasing more and more, just for the fact that now, decisions are made in group and all the doctors have a general knowledge of what’s going on around. The next day, speaking to a friend at ThoughtWorks, he said this hospital received loads of criticism on the way the staff was being overloaded. This is just another proof of how agile practices can enhance productivity and quality of your team.