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The meeting I find the biggest time waster is the "what I did yesterday, what am I doing today" meetings. Nothing better than sitting on a 45 minutes call whi

The meeting I find the biggest time waster is the "what I did yesterday, what am I doing today" meetings. Nothing better than sitting on a 45 minutes call while 15 people try to justify their existence to the pm on the fly. I find a slack channel called #status-updates works wonders. It persists, it's much faster to consume, it's searchable, and you don't have to read it if you don't need to.

nilkn 7y ago
Two problems immediately stand out here: - 45 minutes: it should be 5-10 minutes, 15 on a bad day, and literally never 45. - 15 people: this is probably just too many people in a single standup. Based on my experience, it's quite likely this can be split up into 2-3 teams that can have more autonomy, and meetings like standups will become far easier to run and far more efficient.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Last ~15 person team I was made up of the following 7 devs, a tech lead, 3 qa(1 automation, 2 manual), a product champion, a pm, and a deployment expert(devops) is 14. 14 doesn't seem crazy to me. And splitting this team up runs into some issues as well. Do you now have 3 tech leads who acting as pm reporting to the head pm? Do you try to split up the code base? How do you split up QA/Production Champion/Devops? All these decisions seems to have drawbacks.
  - nilkn 7y ago
    It's impossible to say without knowing the product, technology, codebase, etc. In some cases, yes, absolutely -- you would have three separate teams with three separate leads. In other cases, there isn't a reasonable way to split it up. Either way, there's no reason for the standup to last 45 minutes. Whether the codebase should also be split up is another question that is impossible to answer in general. I can speak from experience though and say it's easy to have two teams work on the same large codebase when they're focusing on different areas, different projects, different priorities, etc. I've seen 3-4 different web teams work on the same website with the same underlying codebase without any issues at all because it was clear in advance that their work wasn't going to directly conflict in any way. It would've been hugely counterproductive to force all those people into a single standup and a single team.
ogre_codes 7y ago
We do daily status meetings and they are often productive. The thing is, if it's a daily meeting, it should last no more than 5-15 minutes. Also, sounds like you have too many people on the call.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Even 10 minute meeting is disruptive. Usually they are in the morning when most people are at their most productive and it takes you out of the flow. Even a 5-10 minute meeting will destroy 30 minutes of productivity from context switching.
  - nilkn 7y ago
    Ultimately it's about maximizing the productivity of the team or engineering organization at large more than it is about optimizing the productivity of a single developer. This often means that it's worth creating a mild disruption for individuals if it prevents the team from falling into a dis-coordinated state that can take days or weeks to recover from.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      What is being communicated that's saving the dev teams weeks of time?
  - ogre_codes 7y ago
    I get it and to a large extent, I agree, but it's not a random phone call or interruption, it's a scheduled meeting, which is easy enough to work around. Interruptions are frustrating (don't get me started on phone calls), but when you are working on a project collaboratively, touching bases and knowing what other people on your team is doing is important.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      I'm not against collaboration or communication. On the contrary I think it's critical to well functioning and productive teams. I just think stand ups as I've experienced over 10 teams and 5 organizations haven't been especially useful. They have been a status update mostly for the pm and a little for the tech lead. What is an example of helpful information you guys are sharing in your stand ups?
ravenstine 7y ago
Yeah, it's pretty dumb considering that not only is everyone on Slack, but most workplaces already have some system for providing status updates, yet management insists that we repeat to them in person the same info they could easily grab from Jira/Trello/Pivotal/Github.
iso1631 7y ago
"what I did yesterday" -- can't remember "what am I doing today" -- not sure yet
dominotw 7y ago
> 15 people seems like your standup team is too big.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Team size is picked for a variety of reasons and the least important of which seems optimal stand up size.
  - nilkn 7y ago
    The entire reason teams exist as a concept is to improve management and coordination logistics. A standup is a daily meeting that every team member has to attend, and in order for it to be productive it shouldn't just be robotic status updates; each member should actually be ingesting and thinking about everything that's brought up. Making sure it can be run smoothly should actually be considered an important factor, and if it's not it does call into question the objectives of the team lead or project manager. Of course, there are other factors as well, as you suggested, and there are indeed cases where a standup of 15+ people can make sense. Even in those cases, though, it is a result of pure incompetence to let the standup run for 45+ minutes even a single time outside of perhaps a major disaster. As a supporting datapoint, in the entire company I work at, there isn't a single standup with that many people.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      Hmm, my first thought for running a 15 person project isn't to run it as three different five person teams. A couple of questions Was the company you work at a software product company? Are your teams cross functional? Do people exist across multiple teams? My fundamental issue with splitting a 15 person team into three 5 person teams it seems more difficult to satisfy two other attributes I think are valuable in teams. That they are cross functional and flat.
      - nilkn 7y ago
        If it truly is a 15 person project for its entire duration then it's not worth splitting up, but you could still consider whether the whole team needs to be present for every standup. More often than not, though, when the team size reaches the 15+ range the project often can be broken down into smaller discrete deliverables that do not need 15 person teams to achieve. Where I work it is all software. We can and sometimes do have folks on multiple teams but generally try to avoid that. And teams can definitely be cross-functional.
duxup 7y ago
Like anything those meetings can be fine. I do those every day, they rarely last more than 20 minutes.
jasonpeacock 7y ago
That starts off broken and abusing the Scrum process. It's supposed to be "what I completed yesterday" and you move your tasks to done. Then "what I'm working on today" is you move your tasks to in-progress. And you raise any blocking issues that you need help with. But it always devolves into "what I did..blahblahblah" because both PM/Managers want an accounting and people feel like they need to justify themselves (as you mention).
sys_64738 7y ago
You'd make me use Slack?

nilkn 7y ago

Two problems immediately stand out here: - 45 minutes: it should be 5-10 minutes, 15 on a bad day, and literally never 45. - 15 people: this is probably just too many people in a single standup. Based on my experience, it's quite likely this can be split up into 2-3 teams that can have more autonomy, and meetings like standups will become far easier to run and far more efficient.

JamesBarney 7y ago
Last ~15 person team I was made up of the following 7 devs, a tech lead, 3 qa(1 automation, 2 manual), a product champion, a pm, and a deployment expert(devops) is 14. 14 doesn't seem crazy to me. And splitting this team up runs into some issues as well. Do you now have 3 tech leads who acting as pm reporting to the head pm? Do you try to split up the code base? How do you split up QA/Production Champion/Devops? All these decisions seems to have drawbacks.
- nilkn 7y ago
  It's impossible to say without knowing the product, technology, codebase, etc. In some cases, yes, absolutely -- you would have three separate teams with three separate leads. In other cases, there isn't a reasonable way to split it up. Either way, there's no reason for the standup to last 45 minutes. Whether the codebase should also be split up is another question that is impossible to answer in general. I can speak from experience though and say it's easy to have two teams work on the same large codebase when they're focusing on different areas, different projects, different priorities, etc. I've seen 3-4 different web teams work on the same website with the same underlying codebase without any issues at all because it was clear in advance that their work wasn't going to directly conflict in any way. It would've been hugely counterproductive to force all those people into a single standup and a single team.

ogre_codes 7y ago

We do daily status meetings and they are often productive. The thing is, if it's a daily meeting, it should last no more than 5-15 minutes. Also, sounds like you have too many people on the call.

JamesBarney 7y ago
Even 10 minute meeting is disruptive. Usually they are in the morning when most people are at their most productive and it takes you out of the flow. Even a 5-10 minute meeting will destroy 30 minutes of productivity from context switching.
- nilkn 7y ago
  Ultimately it's about maximizing the productivity of the team or engineering organization at large more than it is about optimizing the productivity of a single developer. This often means that it's worth creating a mild disruption for individuals if it prevents the team from falling into a dis-coordinated state that can take days or weeks to recover from.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    What is being communicated that's saving the dev teams weeks of time?
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  I get it and to a large extent, I agree, but it's not a random phone call or interruption, it's a scheduled meeting, which is easy enough to work around. Interruptions are frustrating (don't get me started on phone calls), but when you are working on a project collaboratively, touching bases and knowing what other people on your team is doing is important.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    I'm not against collaboration or communication. On the contrary I think it's critical to well functioning and productive teams. I just think stand ups as I've experienced over 10 teams and 5 organizations haven't been especially useful. They have been a status update mostly for the pm and a little for the tech lead. What is an example of helpful information you guys are sharing in your stand ups?

ravenstine 7y ago

Yeah, it's pretty dumb considering that not only is everyone on Slack, but most workplaces already have some system for providing status updates, yet management insists that we repeat to them in person the same info they could easily grab from Jira/Trello/Pivotal/Github.

iso1631 7y ago

"what I did yesterday" -- can't remember "what am I doing today" -- not sure yet

dominotw 7y ago

> 15 people seems like your standup team is too big.

JamesBarney 7y ago
Team size is picked for a variety of reasons and the least important of which seems optimal stand up size.
- nilkn 7y ago
  The entire reason teams exist as a concept is to improve management and coordination logistics. A standup is a daily meeting that every team member has to attend, and in order for it to be productive it shouldn't just be robotic status updates; each member should actually be ingesting and thinking about everything that's brought up. Making sure it can be run smoothly should actually be considered an important factor, and if it's not it does call into question the objectives of the team lead or project manager. Of course, there are other factors as well, as you suggested, and there are indeed cases where a standup of 15+ people can make sense. Even in those cases, though, it is a result of pure incompetence to let the standup run for 45+ minutes even a single time outside of perhaps a major disaster. As a supporting datapoint, in the entire company I work at, there isn't a single standup with that many people.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    Hmm, my first thought for running a 15 person project isn't to run it as three different five person teams. A couple of questions Was the company you work at a software product company? Are your teams cross functional? Do people exist across multiple teams? My fundamental issue with splitting a 15 person team into three 5 person teams it seems more difficult to satisfy two other attributes I think are valuable in teams. That they are cross functional and flat.
    - nilkn 7y ago
      If it truly is a 15 person project for its entire duration then it's not worth splitting up, but you could still consider whether the whole team needs to be present for every standup. More often than not, though, when the team size reaches the 15+ range the project often can be broken down into smaller discrete deliverables that do not need 15 person teams to achieve. Where I work it is all software. We can and sometimes do have folks on multiple teams but generally try to avoid that. And teams can definitely be cross-functional.

duxup 7y ago

Like anything those meetings can be fine. I do those every day, they rarely last more than 20 minutes.

jasonpeacock 7y ago

That starts off broken and abusing the Scrum process. It's supposed to be "what I completed yesterday" and you move your tasks to done. Then "what I'm working on today" is you move your tasks to in-progress. And you raise any blocking issues that you need help with. But it always devolves into "what I did..blahblahblah" because both PM/Managers want an accounting and people feel like they need to justify themselves (as you mention).

sys_64738 7y ago

You'd make me use Slack?