Other agile methods have their variants of the daily meeting, but all are focused on planning and communication at the granular, daily level. Some standard characteris¬tics of a daily meeting are: each meeting is 15-20 minutes; everyone stands in a circle; each meeting occurs at the same location; the order of presentation is defined; team members share status/obstacles; and all team members are invited, but only people involved in the iteration speak at the meeting. This meeting is the forum for discussing the tasks that slipped or were completed early and the unexpected barriers or chal¬lenges that arose in the previous day of development, and for refining plans on a daily basis depending on the realities of this particular effort and team. Features and tasks can be swapped by team members as they discover their own suitability for the tasks they have accepted. Schedules can be refined as the team's velocity becomes clearer. This daily team meeting often is referred to as the heartbeat of the agile methodology.
Agile PMs have an important responsibility to the customer; they must coach the customer on the responsibilities of acting as the organisation's representative on the development team. This is often a new and unfamiliar role to customers, who are accustomed to developing a set of requirements and then waiting for the product to appear from the development lab. The intimate, continuous participation of the customer in the development process and in the decisions made is a key precept of agile development, but that does not mean that the customer is prepared to play that role effectively. Strong agile PMs help to mentor customers through the process, bringing them into the iteration planning sessions, inviting them to the daily meetings, and helping them to understand project status by teaching them to interpret the burn-down charts that the team uses to track its progress. The role of the customer in an agile project is demanding, and the PM must ensure that customers understand and fulfil their role. Without the constant input, reaction and support of the customer, the agile effort will flounder. The PM must ensure that this disconnection is avoided.
With iteration status charts, burn-down charts and daily stand-up meetings being effective progress reporting tools, sometimes these can be obscure to the uninitiated and do not answer stakeholder questions about value delivered, costs and resources consumed or future expectations. While agile theory believes that customers should be so intimately involved in agile development efforts that they know as well as the actual developers where the project stands at all times, in practical terms this is rarely the case. Even if it were, customers may not have the skills or language to pass that understanding to the entire stakeholder community. Clearly, it is critical that agile PMs devise strategies for tracking and measuring the team's performance on the project and for reporting that progress to the customer and stakeholders.