5 ms·

But as the article points out, knowing daily where everyone was with their tasks isn't something that needs a formal meeting. I've worked in highly integrated t

by alxlaz 7y ago

But as the article points out, knowing daily where everyone was with their tasks isn't something that needs a formal meeting. I've worked in highly integrated teams, too, and easily got by with one team meeting a week.

solidasparagus 7y ago
Depends on the size of your team. Once you get to 10+ people in a team, it's hard to spread information effectively with 1:1 communication. What I've liked about standups in teams of that size is the opportunity to kick of unexpected brainstorming because you mention what you're working on and someone mentions they have expertise/ideas in the area that you didn't know about. There are of course many ways to run a productive team.
- DougBTX 7y ago
  On the other hand, the Scrum Guide[1] recommends that teams have 3-9 people in them, and that more leads to poor coordination. Seems like an inverse "Goldilocks problem", Scrum standups are best when there are more than 10 people and less than 10 people in the team. [1] https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum... - page 7
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    I am absolutely not a believer in anyone who talks about agile techniques as having 'Rules'. That is a trademark of agile gone wrong to me. Small teams are better, but not always possible. Agile is about having team mechanics that make your specific team more productive and changing them as your team changes.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    That aligns with my experiences, we aimed for 6, with a max of 8, with a min of 4. I will say, Scrum was really helpful for us, but only because we took "iterate on your process" seriously, and had a culture where teams could experiment with their process. In the end we outgrew it, but Scrum helped us reach the point where we could do so.
- andreygrehov 7y ago
  What’s the point of knowing what the rest of 10 people are working on? You won’t remember all of it anyway. There is no need to add so much cognitive load to your brain every single morning. Engineers should imho start their day with clear mind.
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    To give ideas based on your experience. To raise questions that might not have been considered. To build a team instead of a collection of independent cogs. To know what expertise your teammates have so you know who to go to with a question in the future. It really shouldn't be much cognitive load to listen to what other people are working on for 10 minutes. If it is, it might mean the standup is running at the wrong level of abstraction or perhaps you aren't really a team that has a shared goal.
    - qazpot 7y ago
      You can either have 15 minute quick standup or you can have a meeting to give ideas, raise questions and know my teammate's expertise. > If it is, it might mean the standup is running at the wrong level of abstraction or perhaps you aren't really a team that has a shared goal. Or maybe the problems other people are working on will take more than 10 minutes for any reasonable input.
      - solidasparagus 7y ago
        IMO standup shouldn't be where the conversation takes place, it's where the conversation starts, to be picked up after standup/in a separate meeting.
  - mattrp 7y ago
    Bingo - the whole idea of any meetings before lunch is absurd. Your brain does 90% of its best thinking between wake up and lunch... why waste that on meetings? Sorry for the sidebar... I’m loving this thread. I’ve been telling my wife for years that daily huddles are a scam that manipulative management types do “to maintain momentum” or the appearance of it at least.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  In our experience, scrum teams couldn't scale past 8 members without becoming less effective. The effective communication required for a high performing team suffered, people would tune out in stand-ups etc.
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    I've done standups (not scrum, just standups) with up to 16 people and it was quite effective. It just required a concerted effort to keep it short. The nature of the work probably also helped because tasks took a long time so on any given day only a handful of the people would have substantive updates.
- sandos 7y ago
  In my experience, 10 is way too many for daily standups! Thats when they start getting dragged out from 5 minutes to a 45 minute snore-fest, hearing every little needless detail from someone elses problem that I have no need for! I find the team needs to be at most 6 people, otherwise you probably need to split the team for daily standups to work.
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    That wasn't my experience, but it definitely takes an emphasis on brevity to prevent that. We found two techniques that helped with bigger teams: 1. Everyone explicitly has the responsibility to say "this is going too deep, let's continue it outside of standup" when needed. 2. Having a timer visible that resets after each person's update. This makes it clear when one person's update is taking too long. We were able to get rid of the timer once we had the flow down. Also, it's crucial that everyone on the team feels comfortable saying: "these standups aren't a good use of our time, let's make a change". That's how those techniques were introduced.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    How about when your PM who doesn't understand Agile in the slightest combines two 5-10 person teams in a single, painful 3x-weekly standup.
  - perfetti 7y ago
    I consult and I've been at places where a 4 person standup take a half hour. Usually then I start telling people "We don't solve problems in stand up." I've also worked at places where a 20 person standup took < 10 minutes and helpful b/c sometimes someone not on your team will know how to fix your blocker and just help you out afterwards. I think as long as you have a standup czar or just post your updates to slack, then it's a super useful meeting. If it ever goes over 10 minutes then whoever is running it is just making everyone late for work.
- alxlaz 7y ago
  > Depends on the size of your team. Why does it depend on the size of your team? Teams involved in agile development (where they do the whole daily standup kerfuffle) are supposed to not get to 10+ people. That's like the third thing on the agile coach's slide. Besides, why does it take a full-team standup to find out someone has expertise and ideas in an area that you didn't know about? Are the lead developers/managers sleeping at their desks? Guiding and bringing people together is one of the things they're paid for. They should know who's good at what, and steer the right people (or the right tasks) towards them. If they aren't doing their job, what the team needs is people who do, not one more thing that developers have to figure out on their own time. As for brainstorming -- it shouldn't be unexpected in the first place. Not on a regular basis, anyway. If a developer needs that brainstorming session, they should have the means to make it happen, with only the interested people attending. If they need it, but don't know they need it -- especially common, and especially excusable for junior developers -- that's why we have lead developers and managers. And meetings are not the only way to spread information! If a team has 10, 15 members or more and it's spreading information by word of mouth alone, whether 1:1 or in meetings, that's already a problem. At that point you should have things documented. New members should have an M that they can RTF and ask experienced team members about. If a team got to that size and the only way to spread information is in person, that's something they should remedy, not keep doing!
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    Lead developers and managers can't keep track of all the minutae that people have worked on in their careers. For a concrete example: if I track a performance problem down to a small part of an open-source piece of software, it isn't realistic for managers/lead developers to know if anyone on the team has experience with that piece of the software. But if I mention that in standup, it will immediately be clear if anyone has expertise that is valuable. I've never seen a high performing team that didn't regularly have ad-hoc brainstorming sessions (i.e. you say what you are planning to do and someone says "have you considered this"). Like I said, there are many runs to run a productive team, but standup can be a good place to start that discussion.
    - 7y ago

by alxlaz 7y ago

solidasparagus 7y ago

Depends on the size of your team. Once you get to 10+ people in a team, it's hard to spread information effectively with 1:1 communication. What I've liked about standups in teams of that size is the opportunity to kick of unexpected brainstorming because you mention what you're working on and someone mentions they have expertise/ideas in the area that you didn't know about. There are of course many ways to run a productive team.

DougBTX 7y ago
On the other hand, the Scrum Guide[1] recommends that teams have 3-9 people in them, and that more leads to poor coordination. Seems like an inverse "Goldilocks problem", Scrum standups are best when there are more than 10 people and less than 10 people in the team. [1] https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum... - page 7
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  I am absolutely not a believer in anyone who talks about agile techniques as having 'Rules'. That is a trademark of agile gone wrong to me. Small teams are better, but not always possible. Agile is about having team mechanics that make your specific team more productive and changing them as your team changes.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  That aligns with my experiences, we aimed for 6, with a max of 8, with a min of 4. I will say, Scrum was really helpful for us, but only because we took "iterate on your process" seriously, and had a culture where teams could experiment with their process. In the end we outgrew it, but Scrum helped us reach the point where we could do so.
andreygrehov 7y ago
What’s the point of knowing what the rest of 10 people are working on? You won’t remember all of it anyway. There is no need to add so much cognitive load to your brain every single morning. Engineers should imho start their day with clear mind.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  To give ideas based on your experience. To raise questions that might not have been considered. To build a team instead of a collection of independent cogs. To know what expertise your teammates have so you know who to go to with a question in the future. It really shouldn't be much cognitive load to listen to what other people are working on for 10 minutes. If it is, it might mean the standup is running at the wrong level of abstraction or perhaps you aren't really a team that has a shared goal.
  - qazpot 7y ago
    You can either have 15 minute quick standup or you can have a meeting to give ideas, raise questions and know my teammate's expertise. > If it is, it might mean the standup is running at the wrong level of abstraction or perhaps you aren't really a team that has a shared goal. Or maybe the problems other people are working on will take more than 10 minutes for any reasonable input.
    - solidasparagus 7y ago
      IMO standup shouldn't be where the conversation takes place, it's where the conversation starts, to be picked up after standup/in a separate meeting.
- mattrp 7y ago
  Bingo - the whole idea of any meetings before lunch is absurd. Your brain does 90% of its best thinking between wake up and lunch... why waste that on meetings? Sorry for the sidebar... I’m loving this thread. I’ve been telling my wife for years that daily huddles are a scam that manipulative management types do “to maintain momentum” or the appearance of it at least.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
In our experience, scrum teams couldn't scale past 8 members without becoming less effective. The effective communication required for a high performing team suffered, people would tune out in stand-ups etc.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  I've done standups (not scrum, just standups) with up to 16 people and it was quite effective. It just required a concerted effort to keep it short. The nature of the work probably also helped because tasks took a long time so on any given day only a handful of the people would have substantive updates.
sandos 7y ago
In my experience, 10 is way too many for daily standups! Thats when they start getting dragged out from 5 minutes to a 45 minute snore-fest, hearing every little needless detail from someone elses problem that I have no need for! I find the team needs to be at most 6 people, otherwise you probably need to split the team for daily standups to work.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  That wasn't my experience, but it definitely takes an emphasis on brevity to prevent that. We found two techniques that helped with bigger teams: 1. Everyone explicitly has the responsibility to say "this is going too deep, let's continue it outside of standup" when needed. 2. Having a timer visible that resets after each person's update. This makes it clear when one person's update is taking too long. We were able to get rid of the timer once we had the flow down. Also, it's crucial that everyone on the team feels comfortable saying: "these standups aren't a good use of our time, let's make a change". That's how those techniques were introduced.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  How about when your PM who doesn't understand Agile in the slightest combines two 5-10 person teams in a single, painful 3x-weekly standup.
- perfetti 7y ago
  I consult and I've been at places where a 4 person standup take a half hour. Usually then I start telling people "We don't solve problems in stand up." I've also worked at places where a 20 person standup took < 10 minutes and helpful b/c sometimes someone not on your team will know how to fix your blocker and just help you out afterwards. I think as long as you have a standup czar or just post your updates to slack, then it's a super useful meeting. If it ever goes over 10 minutes then whoever is running it is just making everyone late for work.
alxlaz 7y ago
> Depends on the size of your team. Why does it depend on the size of your team? Teams involved in agile development (where they do the whole daily standup kerfuffle) are supposed to not get to 10+ people. That's like the third thing on the agile coach's slide. Besides, why does it take a full-team standup to find out someone has expertise and ideas in an area that you didn't know about? Are the lead developers/managers sleeping at their desks? Guiding and bringing people together is one of the things they're paid for. They should know who's good at what, and steer the right people (or the right tasks) towards them. If they aren't doing their job, what the team needs is people who do, not one more thing that developers have to figure out on their own time. As for brainstorming -- it shouldn't be unexpected in the first place. Not on a regular basis, anyway. If a developer needs that brainstorming session, they should have the means to make it happen, with only the interested people attending. If they need it, but don't know they need it -- especially common, and especially excusable for junior developers -- that's why we have lead developers and managers. And meetings are not the only way to spread information! If a team has 10, 15 members or more and it's spreading information by word of mouth alone, whether 1:1 or in meetings, that's already a problem. At that point you should have things documented. New members should have an M that they can RTF and ask experienced team members about. If a team got to that size and the only way to spread information is in person, that's something they should remedy, not keep doing!
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  Lead developers and managers can't keep track of all the minutae that people have worked on in their careers. For a concrete example: if I track a performance problem down to a small part of an open-source piece of software, it isn't realistic for managers/lead developers to know if anyone on the team has experience with that piece of the software. But if I mention that in standup, it will immediately be clear if anyone has expertise that is valuable. I've never seen a high performing team that didn't regularly have ad-hoc brainstorming sessions (i.e. you say what you are planning to do and someone says "have you considered this"). Like I said, there are many runs to run a productive team, but standup can be a good place to start that discussion.
  - 7y ago