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I worked a 2 month contract at a company that employed agile techniques and i found them to be nothing but superfluous minutia. Thats not to say they dont work

I worked a 2 month contract at a company that employed agile techniques and i found them to be nothing but superfluous minutia. Thats not to say they dont work for the company as a whole, but i was 1 guy working on 1 project by myself. I was brought in to tackle a specific problem and sort it out, i was just given what i needed and i got on with it, but was forced to partake in the daily stand up meetings and weekly team meetings, which for me specifically were just a waste of time. The stand ups were at 10am which meant that even though the company had flexible hours (awesome) i had to be in at at least 10am, whereas i'd prefer to walk in around 11am-noon and stay late. Also, my part of the weekly 2 hour team meeting was 5 minutes long and nothing else was relevant. My point here is that i'd like people not to try to force principals to fit into every situation, cuz they wont, it'll work for some things but not others, just keep that in mind. PS: Atlassian sounds like an awesome company but JIRA sucks.

100k 16y ago
I killed the morning standup meetings at a former company after I pointed out that we were all on separate projects and so were wasting 3 person hours a day communicating updates that were irrelevant to others.
wccrawford 16y ago
We just moved to agile at my company, and it was rough at first, but I think things are much smoother now. Our standup meetings are for the teams, not the entire company, so they are short and sweet. Everyone on the team knows what's going on, and that's it. We also have an assigned standup time, but it's after the latest developer gets there. We have set hours we have to be there, but we got to pick those hours individually. We just have to stick to them. That's good for both management and your team members. It sounds to me that the problem isn't agile, but how the company is applying it. If you use a hammer like a screwdriver, you're going to be disappointed.
mattmcknight 16y ago
Two hour weekly team meetings aren't part of any agile method that I am aware of. Scrum standups are supposed to be for people working together. Those aren't agile principles.
adambyrtek 16y ago
I claim that the daily stand-up is the single most beneficial agile practice, and also the simplest one to implement on any project. It's absolutely worth to spend 15 minutes each day to learn what others are working on, what problems did they encounter, how does it overlap with your tasks and what is the overall progress. Noticing only the perceived time expense without taking into account the big picture is very short-sighted. Of course all of this makes sense only when you work as a team, not on your own (although the iterative approach is desired even in such case).

100k 16y ago

I killed the morning standup meetings at a former company after I pointed out that we were all on separate projects and so were wasting 3 person hours a day communicating updates that were irrelevant to others.

wccrawford 16y ago

We just moved to agile at my company, and it was rough at first, but I think things are much smoother now. Our standup meetings are for the teams, not the entire company, so they are short and sweet. Everyone on the team knows what's going on, and that's it. We also have an assigned standup time, but it's after the latest developer gets there. We have set hours we have to be there, but we got to pick those hours individually. We just have to stick to them. That's good for both management and your team members. It sounds to me that the problem isn't agile, but how the company is applying it. If you use a hammer like a screwdriver, you're going to be disappointed.

mattmcknight 16y ago

Two hour weekly team meetings aren't part of any agile method that I am aware of. Scrum standups are supposed to be for people working together. Those aren't agile principles.

adambyrtek 16y ago

I claim that the daily stand-up is the single most beneficial agile practice, and also the simplest one to implement on any project. It's absolutely worth to spend 15 minutes each day to learn what others are working on, what problems did they encounter, how does it overlap with your tasks and what is the overall progress. Noticing only the perceived time expense without taking into account the big picture is very short-sighted. Of course all of this makes sense only when you work as a team, not on your own (although the iterative approach is desired even in such case).