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You need to tighten up your standups. Each person should be saying what they did yesterday, what they're going to do today, and identify any dependencies or bl

You need to tighten up your standups. Each person should be saying what they did yesterday, what they're going to do today, and identify any dependencies or blockers. It's important for everyone on the team to know what others are doing in order to share knowledge. If people are zoning out, you're not getting that benefit.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Yes but either you don't know what they're talking about (different part of the project), or already know what they're talking about (because you are a tight team). So, zone out. Who's the Punch and Judy show for?
- Huggernaut 11y ago
  At least where I work (Pivotal) where we are often rotating between pairs, and changing tracks of work in the order of every day to every few days, being kept up to date on the state of the rest of the work is useful. Additionally, we use it as a chance to bring up anything we need help with, or anything we found interesting in the last day, which wasn't important enough to interrupt the rest of the team with.
  - douche 11y ago
    > where we are often rotating between pairs, and changing tracks of work in the order of every day to every few days These sort of working arrangements sound horribly inefficient. How do you ever get enough real familiarity with what you're actually doing when you're getting jerked around to something different every couple days? It sounds like being constantly on the treadmill.
- andylei 11y ago
  you are in between those 2 extremes and standups are useful?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Right - some fraction of the team isn't zoned out, sure. Maybe working on the communication skills of those remaining ones is a better idea, than derailing everybody for a standup.
seanwilson 11y ago
> You need to tighten up your standups. Each person should be saying what they did yesterday, what they're going to do today, and identify any dependencies or blockers. Why do this in a standup though? This information isn't on your planning board? I don't find standups efficient for this.
- MCRed 11y ago
  Plus the real sharing of knowledge happens in ad hoc meetings outside of the standup when people talk about details of the issues-- things you can't talk about in the standup.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  There is a unique motivating factor to standing in front of your peers and saying you didn't get anything finished yesterday. That is, in my opinion, the entire point of the stand up. Everyone knows they are going to have to say something tomorrow and that adds some impetus to finishing their task as quickly as possible.
  - sageikosa 11y ago
    It adds impetus to appear busy and/or find something to report. I think it was said higher in this discussion: recurring meetings are a form of "social engineering"; and I'll follow that with an assertion that they have more affect on the structure of the team (and individuals therein) than they do on the effort the team is nominally working to achieve. If you want to build software systems, you should engage in software engineering, not social engineering. Social engineering only supports the manager hierarchy which is probably at that point misaligned with value production. If I were a deep cynic (instead of just a natural contrarian), I could say they expose the manager as someone who cannot command respect unless they are intimidating subordinates into the social risk of showing themselves impotent to achieve on a day to day basis. If a manager doesn't know what his team is up to before the meeting, he's not doing a good job. Perhaps because he doesn't already command the respect of the team? Can "drum-beat" scheduling help in crunch times? Probably. If you are always in a crunch time, the scale of your efforts probably are probably going to shrink, and/or you may lack time to make longer range plans and are effectively navigating without a map.
chrisp_dc 11y ago
No matter how tight you make the stand up, it still creates an artificial time to do a disruptive start/stop. A 5 minute meeting really leads to close to an hour of derailment. http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html summarizes it better than I ever can.
- kemiller 11y ago
  If your team communicates effortlessly with each other and the stakeholders anyway, you don't really needs scrum, at least not now. But most places where scrum has made a difference, individual maker productivity is not the limiting factor, so even an hour of disruption is worth the cost.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Yes but either you don't know what they're talking about (different part of the project), or already know what they're talking about (because you are a tight team). So, zone out. Who's the Punch and Judy show for?

Huggernaut 11y ago
At least where I work (Pivotal) where we are often rotating between pairs, and changing tracks of work in the order of every day to every few days, being kept up to date on the state of the rest of the work is useful. Additionally, we use it as a chance to bring up anything we need help with, or anything we found interesting in the last day, which wasn't important enough to interrupt the rest of the team with.
- douche 11y ago
  > where we are often rotating between pairs, and changing tracks of work in the order of every day to every few days These sort of working arrangements sound horribly inefficient. How do you ever get enough real familiarity with what you're actually doing when you're getting jerked around to something different every couple days? It sounds like being constantly on the treadmill.
andylei 11y ago
you are in between those 2 extremes and standups are useful?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Right - some fraction of the team isn't zoned out, sure. Maybe working on the communication skills of those remaining ones is a better idea, than derailing everybody for a standup.

seanwilson 11y ago

> You need to tighten up your standups. Each person should be saying what they did yesterday, what they're going to do today, and identify any dependencies or blockers. Why do this in a standup though? This information isn't on your planning board? I don't find standups efficient for this.

MCRed 11y ago
Plus the real sharing of knowledge happens in ad hoc meetings outside of the standup when people talk about details of the issues-- things you can't talk about in the standup.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
There is a unique motivating factor to standing in front of your peers and saying you didn't get anything finished yesterday. That is, in my opinion, the entire point of the stand up. Everyone knows they are going to have to say something tomorrow and that adds some impetus to finishing their task as quickly as possible.
- sageikosa 11y ago
  It adds impetus to appear busy and/or find something to report. I think it was said higher in this discussion: recurring meetings are a form of "social engineering"; and I'll follow that with an assertion that they have more affect on the structure of the team (and individuals therein) than they do on the effort the team is nominally working to achieve. If you want to build software systems, you should engage in software engineering, not social engineering. Social engineering only supports the manager hierarchy which is probably at that point misaligned with value production. If I were a deep cynic (instead of just a natural contrarian), I could say they expose the manager as someone who cannot command respect unless they are intimidating subordinates into the social risk of showing themselves impotent to achieve on a day to day basis. If a manager doesn't know what his team is up to before the meeting, he's not doing a good job. Perhaps because he doesn't already command the respect of the team? Can "drum-beat" scheduling help in crunch times? Probably. If you are always in a crunch time, the scale of your efforts probably are probably going to shrink, and/or you may lack time to make longer range plans and are effectively navigating without a map.

chrisp_dc 11y ago

No matter how tight you make the stand up, it still creates an artificial time to do a disruptive start/stop. A 5 minute meeting really leads to close to an hour of derailment. http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html summarizes it better than I ever can.

kemiller 11y ago
If your team communicates effortlessly with each other and the stakeholders anyway, you don't really needs scrum, at least not now. But most places where scrum has made a difference, individual maker productivity is not the limiting factor, so even an hour of disruption is worth the cost.