The Atlanta chapter is borrowing another idea from engineering: the standup.
Beginning August 31, the Jump Squad will meet every Monday for a short leadership standup focused on priorities, blockers, and the work needed to keep the chapter moving.
The meeting itself is private to chapter leadership for now, but the way we work should not be a mystery. Part of building a GRC Engineering community is showing how engineering ideas can influence more than code.
What is a standup?
A standup is a short, focused team meeting commonly associated with software development and agile ways of working. The name comes from the practice of participants standing during the meeting to help keep it brief.
The basic idea is simple: align on what is moving, surface anything blocking progress, and make sure the team knows what needs attention next. It is not supposed to become a long status meeting.
Standups often operate alongside other agile concepts such as sprints, where a team works toward a defined set of priorities during a short period, then reviews progress and adjusts. The larger principle is useful even outside software development: break work into manageable pieces, communicate frequently, learn from what happened, and keep improving the process.
Applying that thinking to chapter leadership
Our weekly leadership standup will give the Jump Squad a regular place to coordinate chapter priorities, identify blockers, assign next steps, and keep projects from disappearing between larger meetings.
That could mean checking progress toward official chapter status, coordinating events, reviewing member ideas, moving chapter resources forward, or identifying something that needs another leader's help.
The goal is not to make community leadership feel like a software project. It is to borrow the useful parts of engineering culture: visibility, iteration, shared ownership, and a bias toward moving work forward.
Starting with leadership, with room to grow
The first standup is August 31 at 10:00 AM ET and participation is currently limited to Atlanta chapter leaders.
If the format proves useful and there is enough member interest, we may experiment with opening selected standups to Atlanta Pro members in the future. That could create another way for members to see chapter building up close, contribute ideas, and learn how lightweight agile practices can apply outside a traditional engineering team.
For now, the Jump Squad is starting small, learning the rhythm, and putting another GRC Engineering idea into practice.
You can view the leadership standup on the Events calendar and follow From the A for what we learn as the chapter grows.