3 ms·

I'm not GP, but let me try to explain. The key is to treat people as responsible adult professionals with the best intentions. This way communication will happ

by pwm 8y ago

I'm not GP, but let me try to explain. The key is to treat people as responsible adult professionals with the best intentions. This way communication will happen organically and proactively. For organic proactive communication async channels are ideal. When you bump into a problem you need help with you message someone you think can help. They will eventually see your message and find the time to reply (seeing and replying won't always happen at the same time). This type of communication is extremely efficient and sustainable. Sync communication also has its benefits and they're trivial to set up using async comms if/when the need arises. This does not mean that recurring synchronous communications aka. standups are bad per se but their value is highly context dependent and oftentimes they are not the best solution. On the other hand if you treat people as irresponsible children that needs constant supervision then, in my humble opinion, nothing will save you on the long run and implementing mandatory protocols like a daily standup are just surface treatments.

zamber 8y ago
Developers come in all shapes and sizes. Some barely use Slack and are laconic on standups. The whole Agile (tm) is a surface treatment for having a grasp on complexity. It's more of a ritual thing than an exact science. The introvert developers are sometimes so introvert and protective that they deliver at the last possible moment stuff that doesn't follow any conventions set by the team and in some cases makes stuff explode after merging. I would rather have them forced to give me an update and subsequently a pretext to get a peek at their work under the guise of helping than have them fail the whole team. Eventually they shed their impostor syndrome, or at least I hope they do. Personally, I've been on both sides of this pattern and I would rather still have standups. As for supervision, I've seen teams selling bullshit with glitter on standups if there were transitional people or stakeholders. Then it's nothing more than the usual status update dance.

by pwm 8y ago

zamber 8y ago

Developers come in all shapes and sizes. Some barely use Slack and are laconic on standups. The whole Agile (tm) is a surface treatment for having a grasp on complexity. It's more of a ritual thing than an exact science. The introvert developers are sometimes so introvert and protective that they deliver at the last possible moment stuff that doesn't follow any conventions set by the team and in some cases makes stuff explode after merging. I would rather have them forced to give me an update and subsequently a pretext to get a peek at their work under the guise of helping than have them fail the whole team. Eventually they shed their impostor syndrome, or at least I hope they do. Personally, I've been on both sides of this pattern and I would rather still have standups. As for supervision, I've seen teams selling bullshit with glitter on standups if there were transitional people or stakeholders. Then it's nothing more than the usual status update dance.