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In my opinion, standups are useless - asynchronous or not. Waiting until the next standup to resolve blockers is clearly not efficient. What I've observed dur

In my opinion, standups are useless - asynchronous or not. Waiting until the next standup to resolve blockers is clearly not efficient. What I've observed during standups is mostly people staring at the void waiting their turn and a few obnoxious nerds trying to bullshit their way up the hierarchy by talking way too much for their own good. The best communication I've seen was during brainstorm meetings.

mdu96 6y ago
"people starting at the void waiting their turn" -- this is precisely why I think status meetings in general should be avoided!
- the_other 6y ago
  Fair. The main problem is you’re thinking of these meetings as status meetings. They’re not about state, they’re about mutation to new state.
jayd16 6y ago
>Waiting until the next standup to resolve blockers is clearly not efficient. Yeah, don't do that. Standups are for teamwide information exchange to surface unknown unknowns. If you have a blocker and you can start unblocking it, don't wait.
- deckard1 6y ago
  > to surface unknown unknowns That may be true. But that's also a good way to turn a 10 minute standup into an hour long spitballing session. Nearly every blocker or unknown that I've encountered could have been better handled by a 5 minute slack chat with the essential people. Which is almost never my entire team, and is frequently outside the people on my team who would not attend standup anyway.
jeffbee 6y ago
Standups ensure your team cannot achieve anything meaningful. Imagine having a standup at the caltech physics department with Feynman et al. "What did you do since yesterday, Dick?" "Well I sat at my desk and pondered the nature of matter." "Anything blocking you?" "We don't understand the nature of matter." "What are you going to do today?" "Go down to the titty bar and ponder the nature of matter".
- the_other 6y ago
  That’s not how you do stand-up. It should more like: I’m struggling to imagine how so-and-so particle gets the energy to reach the next quantum state. Anyone want to share a blackboard? This is gonna take us about six pots of coffee to solve I reckon.
  - tspike 6y ago
    Next day: well, I drank too much coffee, and I'm burned out on socializing from brainstorming all day. I still don't know how so-and-so particle gets the energy to reach the next quantum state, and honestly I just want my coworkers to shut the fuck up for a few days so I can focus. Boss: Mr. Feynman, can I see you in my office?
  - mdtusz 6y ago
    I agree with what you've written, but this isn't an argument for stand-ups. What you're advocating for is regular communication, and people being involved in each other's work. Stand-ups c_an_ help with this, but they aren't the only solution, and in my view, are one of the less effective solutions. Open, unstructured conversion has always been a better way to solve problems and move things forwards in my experience, and stand-ups entirely kill that by having an orthogonal purpose in the eyes of the manager (unless they're in the trenches doing the same work everyone else is, which is rarely the case). Let your developers have their own standups however they want to do them. Make sure they do meet and discuss, but stay out of it if you're not right there with them helping to solve the problems.
  - RogerL 6y ago
    I chat with people all the time when I'm looking for a creative break out. The idea that it is just going to happen at 10:30am on a daily schedule is baffling to me. I mean, if your team is entirely dysfunctional I can see how doing this can kick start thinking about how to solve development better. Better than nothing. But this entire thread is basically "you are doing it wrong, this is the correct process". There ain't no process (mostly). Perhaps its a way to make terrible, unmotivated developers more productive. I dunno. I've been working from home since March, and haven't missed stand up at all. Everything gets done. Conversations that have to happen still happen. Because we take our job seriously and know enough to reach out when we need to (love my current team, small as it is).

mdu96 6y ago

"people starting at the void waiting their turn" -- this is precisely why I think status meetings in general should be avoided!

the_other 6y ago
Fair. The main problem is you’re thinking of these meetings as status meetings. They’re not about state, they’re about mutation to new state.

jayd16 6y ago

>Waiting until the next standup to resolve blockers is clearly not efficient. Yeah, don't do that. Standups are for teamwide information exchange to surface unknown unknowns. If you have a blocker and you can start unblocking it, don't wait.

deckard1 6y ago
> to surface unknown unknowns That may be true. But that's also a good way to turn a 10 minute standup into an hour long spitballing session. Nearly every blocker or unknown that I've encountered could have been better handled by a 5 minute slack chat with the essential people. Which is almost never my entire team, and is frequently outside the people on my team who would not attend standup anyway.

jeffbee 6y ago

Standups ensure your team cannot achieve anything meaningful. Imagine having a standup at the caltech physics department with Feynman et al. "What did you do since yesterday, Dick?" "Well I sat at my desk and pondered the nature of matter." "Anything blocking you?" "We don't understand the nature of matter." "What are you going to do today?" "Go down to the titty bar and ponder the nature of matter".

the_other 6y ago
That’s not how you do stand-up. It should more like: I’m struggling to imagine how so-and-so particle gets the energy to reach the next quantum state. Anyone want to share a blackboard? This is gonna take us about six pots of coffee to solve I reckon.
- tspike 6y ago
  Next day: well, I drank too much coffee, and I'm burned out on socializing from brainstorming all day. I still don't know how so-and-so particle gets the energy to reach the next quantum state, and honestly I just want my coworkers to shut the fuck up for a few days so I can focus. Boss: Mr. Feynman, can I see you in my office?
- mdtusz 6y ago
  I agree with what you've written, but this isn't an argument for stand-ups. What you're advocating for is regular communication, and people being involved in each other's work. Stand-ups c_an_ help with this, but they aren't the only solution, and in my view, are one of the less effective solutions. Open, unstructured conversion has always been a better way to solve problems and move things forwards in my experience, and stand-ups entirely kill that by having an orthogonal purpose in the eyes of the manager (unless they're in the trenches doing the same work everyone else is, which is rarely the case). Let your developers have their own standups however they want to do them. Make sure they do meet and discuss, but stay out of it if you're not right there with them helping to solve the problems.
- RogerL 6y ago
  I chat with people all the time when I'm looking for a creative break out. The idea that it is just going to happen at 10:30am on a daily schedule is baffling to me. I mean, if your team is entirely dysfunctional I can see how doing this can kick start thinking about how to solve development better. Better than nothing. But this entire thread is basically "you are doing it wrong, this is the correct process". There ain't no process (mostly). Perhaps its a way to make terrible, unmotivated developers more productive. I dunno. I've been working from home since March, and haven't missed stand up at all. Everything gets done. Conversations that have to happen still happen. Because we take our job seriously and know enough to reach out when we need to (love my current team, small as it is).