4 ms·

Ours take 10 minutes, we use them to update people on how our work item is going (e.g. if smth is taking longer than expected) and specifically to give a sense

Ours take 10 minutes, we use them to update people on how our work item is going (e.g. if smth is taking longer than expected) and specifically to give a sense of citizenship and culture. Otherwise we might as well remote in from various corners of the globe in shadowy rooms and talk using voice modulators. Sure, not everyone works like that but I personally like to put names to faces and gain a sense of personality behind the names in a git blame. If you don't value those things then just be low key in your input, its literally 10 minutes of your day and has the potential to present an avoidable issue. To discard it as "management trash" is IMO a massive amount of disrespect toward your fellow team members. They can help and the stand-up opens opportunities for help. There's design work, review work, product management work, scheduling, triage, retrospectives. There's ample opportunities for efficiency gains in these areas during a stand-up outside of just writing code. If you think your job is just writing code then I can see how you might think they're useless but nobody's job is, we all work in teams.

lawn 7y ago
> its literally 10 minutes Even if the meeting itself was instant it would take more than 10 minutes. You would have to stop whatever you're working on, even if you're in the middle of a valuable flow state. Then after the meeting you have to get back into whatever it was, which alone can take you more than 10 minutes depending on the depth of your work. If that's not bad enough then what you talked about in the meeting can also linger. You'll think of problems others have had and it causes your mind to lose focus, now you have thoughts about your problem mixed with other problems. These meetings also tend to happen during the mornings, smack in the middle of the most productive hours of the day. No, a daily standup takes much more time than 10 minutes.
- Quarrelsome 7y ago
  Your job is more than just code. Your job is other people too. Live in a box all you like but you're completely discounting the value of ensuring other members of the team know what's going on with you over your current work item. FWIW, imagine how a greenhorn might feel working on a team with you. If you feel like giving them some time of your day is a waste or that listening to their problems is a waste they're not going to feel enthused working on your team. Sure, that doesn't necessarily influence your current work item but it might contribute to overwork later if they leave for a team that actually makes them feel like they matter.
  - lawn 7y ago
    There's a big leap between never interacting with other people and my claim that standups in fact takes longer than 10 minutes.
- rmetzler 7y ago
  Breaking my state of flow is also something I don’t like about stand ups. And yes, they tend to be in the morning when I have my most productive hours. One solution I found is to write a quick status in the chat and excuse myself from the stand up. Sometimes I finish 20 minutes before the stand up and think about what to do next. I usually won’t go into deep work but plan something, write my todo list on paper or review some PR to make use of the amount of time that’s to small to get into flow.
- jsutton 7y ago
  You should be able to figure out a good daily time for your team that doesn't involve breaking out of the middle of a flow state. Maybe when everyone is expected to be in the office, or even right after lunch?
  - thrower123 7y ago
    There is never such a time, if you allow any kind of flexibility or self-direction in scheduling. Moreover, if you are customer-driven, you will wind up with having calls here, there, and everywhere, that some subset of your people will be on that clash with any potential standup time.
  - lawn 7y ago
    The risk is always there. Say you schedule it at 8 in the morning? Then you might interrupt the people who come in earlier. Schedule it before or after lunch? Unfortunately people eat lunch at different times too. Schedule it at the end of the day? Then the daily standup loses it's effectiveness (while you risk interrupting people who flow later in the day).
vfc1 7y ago
> its literally 10 minutes Literally, it's not 10 minutes. Count the time that you have stopped working and people are chatting waiting for the meeting, checking their email when they would not otherwise do so, not working on their main tasks. 20 minutes to half an hour of time not usable for main tasks is a more typical estimate.
- Quarrelsome 7y ago
  Mine is timed and its ten minutes and that's with me stretching out a little. If we were determined to make it small it could be five. We have six people in the stand-up. If you're so sad about being interrupted then maybe you're taking on too much work?
  - vfc1 7y ago
    Well, the act of timing changes everything. it will affect the total duration as people will deliberately hurry up. That is actually a good idea, but it's the first time I heard about it. In most companies, this is not done. Also, it's not just the literal time of the meeting. It's the time people spend waiting for the meeting, chatting, reading email instead of working on their main task for the day. It's about the interruption cost and the disruption of what you were doing, not about the literal cost in minutes. Also, most developers don't have a saying in how much work is assigned to them. Usually, they are over assigned already and the cost of the standup is not accounted for in how long tasks should take. Add all standups of a week, and you have half a morning of work per week down the drain. That's a lot and again that is literal total time only, and does not account for interruption cost.
    - Quarrelsome 7y ago
      I don't literally state we're on a clock, its just that Microsoft teams tells me how long the call takes and its pretty much 10 minutes every time (usually a little less). I would argue that if you don't have your stand-ups at a consistent time with everyone ready to go (and then back to work) or have enough time to spare 10 minutes a day then that isn't a healthy work environment. I personally view the negative connotations with stand ups here as a "DAE hate stand-ups?" circlejerk where people get to drag all their concerns about work into a bin of "standup" and blame standups for these issues. Maybe the organiser doesn't respect the start time, maybe you have a "waffler" and nobody has the spine to tell them to be more concise, maybe your IT department sucks so the calls are always full of technical issues. I would assert that a healthy well-run stand up has none of these issues. I get that they're more value for some than others and not everyone is into them but objectively they're very useful tool for the health of the group as a whole. Specifically I would encourage more senior members of staff to acknowledge the value they give to more junior members of staff. For some of them the standup is a golden opportunity to seek guidance and acknowledgement.

lawn 7y ago

> its literally 10 minutes Even if the meeting itself was instant it would take more than 10 minutes. You would have to stop whatever you're working on, even if you're in the middle of a valuable flow state. Then after the meeting you have to get back into whatever it was, which alone can take you more than 10 minutes depending on the depth of your work. If that's not bad enough then what you talked about in the meeting can also linger. You'll think of problems others have had and it causes your mind to lose focus, now you have thoughts about your problem mixed with other problems. These meetings also tend to happen during the mornings, smack in the middle of the most productive hours of the day. No, a daily standup takes much more time than 10 minutes.

Quarrelsome 7y ago
Your job is more than just code. Your job is other people too. Live in a box all you like but you're completely discounting the value of ensuring other members of the team know what's going on with you over your current work item. FWIW, imagine how a greenhorn might feel working on a team with you. If you feel like giving them some time of your day is a waste or that listening to their problems is a waste they're not going to feel enthused working on your team. Sure, that doesn't necessarily influence your current work item but it might contribute to overwork later if they leave for a team that actually makes them feel like they matter.
- lawn 7y ago
  There's a big leap between never interacting with other people and my claim that standups in fact takes longer than 10 minutes.
rmetzler 7y ago
Breaking my state of flow is also something I don’t like about stand ups. And yes, they tend to be in the morning when I have my most productive hours. One solution I found is to write a quick status in the chat and excuse myself from the stand up. Sometimes I finish 20 minutes before the stand up and think about what to do next. I usually won’t go into deep work but plan something, write my todo list on paper or review some PR to make use of the amount of time that’s to small to get into flow.
jsutton 7y ago
You should be able to figure out a good daily time for your team that doesn't involve breaking out of the middle of a flow state. Maybe when everyone is expected to be in the office, or even right after lunch?
- thrower123 7y ago
  There is never such a time, if you allow any kind of flexibility or self-direction in scheduling. Moreover, if you are customer-driven, you will wind up with having calls here, there, and everywhere, that some subset of your people will be on that clash with any potential standup time.
- lawn 7y ago
  The risk is always there. Say you schedule it at 8 in the morning? Then you might interrupt the people who come in earlier. Schedule it before or after lunch? Unfortunately people eat lunch at different times too. Schedule it at the end of the day? Then the daily standup loses it's effectiveness (while you risk interrupting people who flow later in the day).

vfc1 7y ago

> its literally 10 minutes Literally, it's not 10 minutes. Count the time that you have stopped working and people are chatting waiting for the meeting, checking their email when they would not otherwise do so, not working on their main tasks. 20 minutes to half an hour of time not usable for main tasks is a more typical estimate.

Quarrelsome 7y ago
Mine is timed and its ten minutes and that's with me stretching out a little. If we were determined to make it small it could be five. We have six people in the stand-up. If you're so sad about being interrupted then maybe you're taking on too much work?
- vfc1 7y ago
  Well, the act of timing changes everything. it will affect the total duration as people will deliberately hurry up. That is actually a good idea, but it's the first time I heard about it. In most companies, this is not done. Also, it's not just the literal time of the meeting. It's the time people spend waiting for the meeting, chatting, reading email instead of working on their main task for the day. It's about the interruption cost and the disruption of what you were doing, not about the literal cost in minutes. Also, most developers don't have a saying in how much work is assigned to them. Usually, they are over assigned already and the cost of the standup is not accounted for in how long tasks should take. Add all standups of a week, and you have half a morning of work per week down the drain. That's a lot and again that is literal total time only, and does not account for interruption cost.
  - Quarrelsome 7y ago
    I don't literally state we're on a clock, its just that Microsoft teams tells me how long the call takes and its pretty much 10 minutes every time (usually a little less). I would argue that if you don't have your stand-ups at a consistent time with everyone ready to go (and then back to work) or have enough time to spare 10 minutes a day then that isn't a healthy work environment. I personally view the negative connotations with stand ups here as a "DAE hate stand-ups?" circlejerk where people get to drag all their concerns about work into a bin of "standup" and blame standups for these issues. Maybe the organiser doesn't respect the start time, maybe you have a "waffler" and nobody has the spine to tell them to be more concise, maybe your IT department sucks so the calls are always full of technical issues. I would assert that a healthy well-run stand up has none of these issues. I get that they're more value for some than others and not everyone is into them but objectively they're very useful tool for the health of the group as a whole. Specifically I would encourage more senior members of staff to acknowledge the value they give to more junior members of staff. For some of them the standup is a golden opportunity to seek guidance and acknowledgement.