5 ms·

Having a >short< daily meeting is important part of any dev-team. Goals are: 1. Discussion on who's doing what ( details ) 2. Discussion on who did what, sin

Having a >short< daily meeting is important part of any dev-team. Goals are: 1. Discussion on who's doing what ( details ) 2. Discussion on who did what, since last meeting. 3. Help / suggestions based on the conversations above.

struppi 9y ago
True. That's the goals you want to achieve. I am just trying to say that you do not necessarily need a daily meeting to achieve these goals. And that you might get all the value from the daily scrum with something that better suits your team.
int_19h 9y ago
A daily meeting is not the only way to achieve all that. And in many cases, the precise details of what someone is doing aren't really relevant to everyone, either.
dkersten 9y ago
Provided only work that's in the issue tracker is worked on (thus avoiding work being done more than once by different people), I've never found 2. useful. That is, the information has never been actionable for me, so it really doesn't matter what people did. People SHOULD flag stuff they encountered that others should know about, but to me that's part of the 3. "what you need/can help on" category (essentially "anything you want to flag?" be it gotchas, blockers, offers of help etc) Even 1. I find usually not useful, provided you do regular planning meetings (I like them to be weekly personally) where people are roughly assigned to areas and then just work off the backlog, although it can vary I suppose. I buy into the peopleware model personally: status meetings are a distraction, other meetings need an agenda (with a clearly defined "end point") and be time boxed. Aligning people and sharing knowledge should be accomplished through informal "coffee morning" conference-breaks-hallway-conversation style events. Ideally an hour set aside once a week, purely for this. That largely covers the cases of people overhearing what you're doing and saying they can help. In my experience, my team works so closely anyway that the standups don't add much, if anything, and the people who could benefit are not at the meeting (other teams basically). I've tried text updates in slack and that had the great side effect that other teams could see them and offer advice or help, but the downside is they're boring and people often don't read them. Informal coffee morning chats largely solve that in my opinion. Besides peoplewares suggestions on meetings, I also really like the GROWS Method model of agile.
dasmoth 9y ago
None of these specifically motivate daily being the right granularity. In my experience, the frequency seems to be more about maintaining a feeling of supervision.
martijn_himself 9y ago
Having just finished a 5 week agile project with daily stand-ups I found: 1. I'm already aware of what everyone is doing which is relevant to my own work outside the daily meeting. Everything else is just noise. 2. I don't want to know what someone else did since the last meeting unless it was relevant to my stream of work, in which case I already know about it. 3. See above. Needless to say I found the daily stand-ups a complete waste of time.
- aembleton 9y ago
  - Other works streams might not affect yours, but don't you find that it helps you to understand aspects of the project that will affect future workstreams? - How do you or they know that it will have no affect on your area without the daily stand up? - If someone is experiencing a blocker, you might have come across the same issue earlier in your career or even last week. Then you can help them.
  - martijn_himself 9y ago
    These are all very valid points but I don't feel the need for a daily stand up to achieve them! Effective communication and meetings already achieve these things.
    - aembleton 9y ago
      If your team has effective enough communications to not require them, then I guess they're not for you. For me, that has never been the case in any team that I've worked in.
  - sheepmullet 9y ago
    > but don't you find that it helps you to understand aspects of the project that will affect future workstreams? I can't understand what other people are actually doing when it's provided in 1-2min snippets each day. Even after a few months of this I will be clueless.
- wastedhours 9y ago
mathw 9y ago
No, because the moment a meeting starts allowing discussion it starts taking ages, and you've got your entire team standing there waiting for it to be over and it becomes an enormous waste of time. Maintaining discipline for daily standups is phenomenally difficult.

struppi 9y ago

True. That's the goals you want to achieve. I am just trying to say that you do not necessarily need a daily meeting to achieve these goals. And that you might get all the value from the daily scrum with something that better suits your team.

int_19h 9y ago

A daily meeting is not the only way to achieve all that. And in many cases, the precise details of what someone is doing aren't really relevant to everyone, either.

dkersten 9y ago

Provided only work that's in the issue tracker is worked on (thus avoiding work being done more than once by different people), I've never found 2. useful. That is, the information has never been actionable for me, so it really doesn't matter what people did. People SHOULD flag stuff they encountered that others should know about, but to me that's part of the 3. "what you need/can help on" category (essentially "anything you want to flag?" be it gotchas, blockers, offers of help etc) Even 1. I find usually not useful, provided you do regular planning meetings (I like them to be weekly personally) where people are roughly assigned to areas and then just work off the backlog, although it can vary I suppose. I buy into the peopleware model personally: status meetings are a distraction, other meetings need an agenda (with a clearly defined "end point") and be time boxed. Aligning people and sharing knowledge should be accomplished through informal "coffee morning" conference-breaks-hallway-conversation style events. Ideally an hour set aside once a week, purely for this. That largely covers the cases of people overhearing what you're doing and saying they can help. In my experience, my team works so closely anyway that the standups don't add much, if anything, and the people who could benefit are not at the meeting (other teams basically). I've tried text updates in slack and that had the great side effect that other teams could see them and offer advice or help, but the downside is they're boring and people often don't read them. Informal coffee morning chats largely solve that in my opinion. Besides peoplewares suggestions on meetings, I also really like the GROWS Method model of agile.

dasmoth 9y ago

None of these specifically motivate daily being the right granularity. In my experience, the frequency seems to be more about maintaining a feeling of supervision.

martijn_himself 9y ago

Having just finished a 5 week agile project with daily stand-ups I found: 1. I'm already aware of what everyone is doing which is relevant to my own work outside the daily meeting. Everything else is just noise. 2. I don't want to know what someone else did since the last meeting unless it was relevant to my stream of work, in which case I already know about it. 3. See above. Needless to say I found the daily stand-ups a complete waste of time.

aembleton 9y ago
- Other works streams might not affect yours, but don't you find that it helps you to understand aspects of the project that will affect future workstreams? - How do you or they know that it will have no affect on your area without the daily stand up? - If someone is experiencing a blocker, you might have come across the same issue earlier in your career or even last week. Then you can help them.
- martijn_himself 9y ago
  These are all very valid points but I don't feel the need for a daily stand up to achieve them! Effective communication and meetings already achieve these things.
  - aembleton 9y ago
    If your team has effective enough communications to not require them, then I guess they're not for you. For me, that has never been the case in any team that I've worked in.
- sheepmullet 9y ago
  > but don't you find that it helps you to understand aspects of the project that will affect future workstreams? I can't understand what other people are actually doing when it's provided in 1-2min snippets each day. Even after a few months of this I will be clueless.
wastedhours 9y ago

mathw 9y ago

No, because the moment a meeting starts allowing discussion it starts taking ages, and you've got your entire team standing there waiting for it to be over and it becomes an enormous waste of time. Maintaining discipline for daily standups is phenomenally difficult.