AI in your Obeya stand-up: an assistant that knows the numbers

The starting point: nothing changes about the rhythm

An Obeya stand-up is short, standing and fixed: what is red, who picks it up? An AI changes nothing about that. What changes is that looking things up goes faster. Instead of looking up a number, opening an action list and asking a colleague who had it again, you ask the board one question.

What stays the same: someone leads the stand-up, the team decides, and every action gets a person as owner. The CrewMate is a team member that looks things up, summarises and proposes. It is not a chair.

A quarter of an hour, minute by minute

An example with demo names. The team at Meridiaan Health follows the rollout of a new way of working. Sanne leads the stand-up. The board has three screens: goals and KPIs on the left, the CrewMate in the middle, what needs attention on the right.

Which questions work well

The CrewMate is most useful for concrete questions about what is on the board:

• What is red? And what has changed since yesterday?
• Which actions are overdue, and whose are they?
• Summarise the news on the wall. If there is a news tile on the wall.
• Show a chart, for example intake per month against the target. It only uses columns that are in your data.

Less suitable are questions whose answer is not on the board. Then it can do no more than say so, and the question belongs to the team.

Out loud, without a keyboard

The stand-up is standing in front of the wall. Nobody walks to a keyboard. That is why the CrewMate works with voice. Tap the speak button, or switch the conversation on for hands-free: it hears when you are done, answers out loud and listens again. In the Syner Suite you operate the wall with a tap or with your voice.

For those who are not there too

A stand-up with an AI colleague is no replacement for whoever is at home. Video calling is part of CoVince itself, next to the board, and you show the board in the conversation: everyone sees at once what changes. The remote colleague is on the right of the wall in the Syner Suite. That way the CrewMate is not only with the people in the room, but with the whole team.

Four agreements that keep it honest

1. The team decides. The CrewMate proposes, a person says yes or no.
2. Every action has a person as owner, with a date. No action by ‘the team’ or ‘the AI’.
3. The board is the source. If a number is not on it, the answer is not based on it either.
4. Stay short. Fifteen minutes. What takes longer belongs in a separate conversation.

How to try it this week

Hold your own stand-up, and let the CrewMate do three things: tell what is red, tell which actions are overdue, and make a proposal for one red KPI without an action. Adjust the proposal, put it on the timeline and see the next day whether it has been picked up. You can read more about the rhythm itself in Obeya stand-up: agenda and rhythm, and a printable checklist is in Stand-up agenda and checklist.

Where it chafes in practice

The team waits until the CrewMate answers. An answer takes a few seconds, and in that time the conversation falls silent. Ask the question, keep talking about the next point meanwhile and come back to the answer.

The question is too vague. ‘How is it going?’ produces a general answer. ‘Which actions are overdue, and whose?’ produces something you can pick up.

The action gets no owner. A proposal from the CrewMate is only an action when someone says: I will do that, by that date. Otherwise there is a nice plan on the timeline that nobody carries out.