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Am I the only one who raises a flag immediately when there is a blocker? Why would I wait until the next day?

by jmondi 6y ago

city41 6y ago
Communicating blockers in stand up should be for heads up purposes. Just to let everyone else adjust expectations on your work. If you’re waiting for a stand up to kick off resolving a blocker, that doesn’t seem right.
BeetleB 6y ago
> Am I the only one who raises a flag immediately when there is a blocker? Why would I wait until the next day? You can. Saying it in the standup is a formal way of putting the burden on the team. Like "I'm blocked by this. I sent out an email yesterday but no one helped." is useful. And when you have a scrum master external to the team, it's his responsibility to ask on the next day "X was blocked by this yesterday. Did anyone help?" If no one did, there will be a discussion on why not. As others have mentioned, it only really works if people are motivated to listen during the standup. If they're not, the team is dysfunctional anyway (regardless of whether you have a standup or not). Also, it's fairly useless if people are working on fairly different things.
jkingsbery 6y ago
They're not mutually exclusive. Especially at a time when everyone is remote and it's easy to miss emails/slack messages, etc., having a dedicated time to say "Hey all, I'm still waiting on X" is helpful.
- deckard1 6y ago
  This comes up a lot on the teams I've worked on. But ultimately, the entire reason you have to go to standup and remind people to do their job is because they are not doing their job. It's surprising the number of people that can't be assed to make a simple to-do list and follow through on it and the number of meetings that are necessary to remind them of this fact. I mean... what is the failure here? Is this not what Jira and the hundreds of other project management systems is designed to do? It's baffling, to say the least.
wiml 6y ago
In my experience, the "blockers" that standups help with are not so clear cut. Of course if I reach a point where I clearly can't proceed without X, I'll email/slack/async-request the person who might be able to get me X, and work on something else until that resolves. What standups help with (IMexperience) are situations where you're spending a lot of time on something but it's not really clear whether you're making progress. Maybe someone has dealt with that API before on a previous project and knows you're doomed, or how to help. Maybe someone has a dusty old CS memory that will turn your O(n!) to O(n). Or maybe — and I don't think we should discount the usefulness of this — it just provides reassurance that yes this is a thorny problem, there isn't an obvious alternative you've missed, you're not wasting your time or being stupid. That makes a big difference in morale, and morale makes a big difference in productivity. Sure, there's some benefit in having a daily status report to your manager who is presumably also at the standup, but that's not the main benefit of a daily standup, IMHO. If that is the only benefit you're getting from it, then sure, cancel the standup.
mindfulgeek 6y ago
I think about it like this — if I ask a question, someone needs to be interrupted to make that happen. Even if they were on slack anyway, or between tasks, if it’s not something they are otherwise working on, it may take them off their task. If my thing is critical or blocking others, I raise a flag. If it can wait, I wait too. Disruptions are probably one of the most costly time investments of our trade.

Am I the only one who raises a flag immediately when there is a blocker? Why would I wait until the next day?

by jmondi 6y ago

Am I the only one who raises a flag immediately when there is a blocker? Why would I wait until the next day?

Communicating blockers in stand up should be for heads up purposes. Just to let everyone else adjust expectations on your work. If you’re waiting for a stand up to kick off resolving a blocker, that doesn’t seem right.

BeetleB 6y ago

> Am I the only one who raises a flag immediately when there is a blocker? Why would I wait until the next day? You can. Saying it in the standup is a formal way of putting the burden on the team. Like "I'm blocked by this. I sent out an email yesterday but no one helped." is useful. And when you have a scrum master external to the team, it's his responsibility to ask on the next day "X was blocked by this yesterday. Did anyone help?" If no one did, there will be a discussion on why not. As others have mentioned, it only really works if people are motivated to listen during the standup. If they're not, the team is dysfunctional anyway (regardless of whether you have a standup or not). Also, it's fairly useless if people are working on fairly different things.

jkingsbery 6y ago

They're not mutually exclusive. Especially at a time when everyone is remote and it's easy to miss emails/slack messages, etc., having a dedicated time to say "Hey all, I'm still waiting on X" is helpful.

deckard1 6y ago
This comes up a lot on the teams I've worked on. But ultimately, the entire reason you have to go to standup and remind people to do their job is because they are not doing their job. It's surprising the number of people that can't be assed to make a simple to-do list and follow through on it and the number of meetings that are necessary to remind them of this fact. I mean... what is the failure here? Is this not what Jira and the hundreds of other project management systems is designed to do? It's baffling, to say the least.

wiml 6y ago

In my experience, the "blockers" that standups help with are not so clear cut. Of course if I reach a point where I clearly can't proceed without X, I'll email/slack/async-request the person who might be able to get me X, and work on something else until that resolves. What standups help with (IMexperience) are situations where you're spending a lot of time on something but it's not really clear whether you're making progress. Maybe someone has dealt with that API before on a previous project and knows you're doomed, or how to help. Maybe someone has a dusty old CS memory that will turn your O(n!) to O(n). Or maybe — and I don't think we should discount the usefulness of this — it just provides reassurance that yes this is a thorny problem, there isn't an obvious alternative you've missed, you're not wasting your time or being stupid. That makes a big difference in morale, and morale makes a big difference in productivity. Sure, there's some benefit in having a daily status report to your manager who is presumably also at the standup, but that's not the main benefit of a daily standup, IMHO. If that is the only benefit you're getting from it, then sure, cancel the standup.

mindfulgeek 6y ago

I think about it like this — if I ask a question, someone needs to be interrupted to make that happen. Even if they were on slack anyway, or between tasks, if it’s not something they are otherwise working on, it may take them off their task. If my thing is critical or blocking others, I raise a flag. If it can wait, I wait too. Disruptions are probably one of the most costly time investments of our trade.