5 ms·

I think that's either a team culture issue, a management issue, or a business culture issue. Teams I've worked on have had no issue brainstorming ideas for a pe

by chomp 8y ago

I think that's either a team culture issue, a management issue, or a business culture issue. Teams I've worked on have had no issue brainstorming ideas for a person who's stumped. Now, I'm not totally defending standups here, I've been on teams where daily standups are a stuffy formality, and they are miserable. I've also had the pleasure of being on teams where weekly standups were implemented, and they were an absolute delight and completely useful. I will qualify all of my opinions with the fact that the best teams I've worked with implement Kanban, so there is no sprint planning. We just pull off backlog and work with weekly standups. There's way way less overhead, with some tradeoffs. I also definitely think that certain team cultures are completely incompatible with standups, to the point that you receive negative benefit from implementing them. If you have a lot of people who are of the type "my responsibility ends where my story points end", I am pretty sure you will end up have a bad time doing standups.

lttlrck 8y ago
Are stand up meetings the correct venue for brainstorming?
- chomp 8y ago
  Maybe not, but if your peer said "hey can someone help me with this task" in a standup, wouldn't you want to help them once the meeting is over?
  - kelnos 8y ago
    Replace that with asking for help in slack or whatever, and you don't need a standup. And you also get help as soon as people's time is available, not the next day.
    - voltagex_ 8y ago
      I've found that asking for help over text or the phone is less effective than asking in person.
    - Scarblac 8y ago
      But then you'd need people to listen to some slack channel, and be distracted continuously throughout the day. That's worse.
- maccam94 8y ago
  No, but they can spur an interested subset of people to brainstorm after the standup ends.
- bitwize 8y ago
  No, those are things you want to take "offline" or "to the parking lot".
hrktb 8y ago
In some previous team, I realized that some people working on very long tasks just gave bullshit updates. What they explained was interesting, it gave a sense of progress, and they communicated well. Too well perhaps, their small talk was on super minor or even unrelated stuff that they saw the previous day. They were doing mainly exploratory work, and it made no sense to bring on board other people before they settled on a direction themselves. I think ultimately a one size fits them all approach only “works” when the people on the fringe also play the game and bullshit (in a good light) their way around.
- still_grokking 8y ago
  It's a good idea to waste valuable engineering time with "bullshit" (in a good light) small talk? OK… I likely will never understand the great minds behind management.
  - jrumbut 8y ago
    It's a trade off. Some of the communication is very valuable, and needs to happen for coordination, knowledge sharing, etc. The potential harm of that communication not happening is great, the risk of having a meeting go 15 minutes longer is worth trying to avoid (hence the article) but much smaller. However, if only some people speak that can create divisions in the team, or make it look like the speakers are the leading members when that may or may not be true. So to prevent that dynamic everyone says something, and people can help the team function better by coming up with a nifty one minute oration. Ultimately making software is a human endeavor. Sometimes a little small talk prevents the humans from feeling bad and not making software. Sometimes it has the opposite effect. The best managers figure out which case is true at a specific time and place and adapt. Good managers just have to pick what risks to take and live with the outcome.

by chomp 8y ago

lttlrck 8y ago

Are stand up meetings the correct venue for brainstorming?

chomp 8y ago
Maybe not, but if your peer said "hey can someone help me with this task" in a standup, wouldn't you want to help them once the meeting is over?
- kelnos 8y ago
  Replace that with asking for help in slack or whatever, and you don't need a standup. And you also get help as soon as people's time is available, not the next day.
  - voltagex_ 8y ago
    I've found that asking for help over text or the phone is less effective than asking in person.
  - Scarblac 8y ago
    But then you'd need people to listen to some slack channel, and be distracted continuously throughout the day. That's worse.
maccam94 8y ago
No, but they can spur an interested subset of people to brainstorm after the standup ends.
bitwize 8y ago
No, those are things you want to take "offline" or "to the parking lot".

hrktb 8y ago

In some previous team, I realized that some people working on very long tasks just gave bullshit updates. What they explained was interesting, it gave a sense of progress, and they communicated well. Too well perhaps, their small talk was on super minor or even unrelated stuff that they saw the previous day. They were doing mainly exploratory work, and it made no sense to bring on board other people before they settled on a direction themselves. I think ultimately a one size fits them all approach only “works” when the people on the fringe also play the game and bullshit (in a good light) their way around.

still_grokking 8y ago
It's a good idea to waste valuable engineering time with "bullshit" (in a good light) small talk? OK… I likely will never understand the great minds behind management.
- jrumbut 8y ago
  It's a trade off. Some of the communication is very valuable, and needs to happen for coordination, knowledge sharing, etc. The potential harm of that communication not happening is great, the risk of having a meeting go 15 minutes longer is worth trying to avoid (hence the article) but much smaller. However, if only some people speak that can create divisions in the team, or make it look like the speakers are the leading members when that may or may not be true. So to prevent that dynamic everyone says something, and people can help the team function better by coming up with a nifty one minute oration. Ultimately making software is a human endeavor. Sometimes a little small talk prevents the humans from feeling bad and not making software. Sometimes it has the opposite effect. The best managers figure out which case is true at a specific time and place and adapt. Good managers just have to pick what risks to take and live with the outcome.