8 ms·

I don't understand why it needs to be formalised like this, what if people are working on something for a bit longer than one day and got no news to tell or tal

I don't understand why it needs to be formalised like this, what if people are working on something for a bit longer than one day and got no news to tell or talk about? I think each company and product got its own rhythm and meetings should be adjusted to match that, we are human beings, not robots.

pengaru 6y ago
When I last worked in an org with standups, whenever I intended to go head-down on something substantial I'd simply tell the vp of eng to not expect to hear from me or even see me for at least a few days until I have something substantial worth sharing on the subject. There was never any resistance there, and I've never encountered friction in that vein anywhere. No cto or vpe above me has ever wanted to get in the way of someone productive getting into a multi-day flow state anywhere I've bothered to work that hard. Peers or underlings however, the competition that is, it's a different story I mostly ignored. Having said that, I found standups to be a very obnoxious, passive-aggressive tool management used for dealing with folks unable to maintain a relevant and correctly prioritized todo list, and stay on task day-to-day. It's a group I've dabbled in being part of at some employers, and found quite unfulfilling and frustrating because management is way more meddlesome in that mode and individual leverage is practically nonexistent without playing the politics game well. YMMV
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > It's a group I've dabbled in being part of at some employers, and found quite unfulfilling and frustrating because management is way more meddlesome in that mode and individual leverage is practically nonexistent without playing the politics game well. YMMV No kidding. Seeing this failure mode is unfortunate because it's not an immediate killer but it's a lethal one once it sinks its teeth in un-opposed.
lostcolony 6y ago
Then they say "I worked on X, still working on X, no blockers" and move on. A well run standup is a minute per person, max. It ensures everyone pulls their head up out of their work long enough to highlight obstacles that might effect delivery, or that someone else on the team might be able to help with, while also ensuring there aren't constant interruptions throughout the day.
- teh_klev 6y ago
  This ^^^ we do a 30 minute standup every morning (remotely) and it's mostly the same except we get about three mins per team member. It's also a good time to bring up issues if user stories/acceptance criteria aren't well enough refined after coming out of draft and that gets taken to another, usually short meeting with the PM's individually. In that 30 mins we also handle bug reports and assign blah blah blah. Those 30 mins are 100% focused to stuff people are working on, except for an initial 5 mins or so of chit chat. It's massively efficient and massively productive. So whatever the writer of this article was doing, it certainly wasn't a standup. I'm not big on prescriptive process, but a well organised standup is unbeatable.
  - dingaling 6y ago
    > we do a 30 minute standup every morning If you wouldn't feel comfortable standing with a coffee for the duration of the standup then it's too long. 30 minutes is far too long and is well into conventional status-meeting territory. Aim for 10. Flip the premise of the meeting from "who's working on what" to "who's blocked by what". If there's no problem, say nothing. Not only does that save time, it is also more empowering for those with problems because they're not "swimming against the current" of those who are reporting their successes.
- Mc91 6y ago
  That's what we do as well. I have been in good standups and bad standups, sometimes at the same company. A bad week-after-week standup was one that dragged on and on, and started at 8AM because that was evening time for our off-shore team which the US team knew was going to be canned in a few weeks. Each person would go on and on, on a bad connection in a thick accent about what they were working on. Between the connection, and accent, and knowledge they were all junior and working on minor tickets and flubbing them and all soon to be getting axed, I did not pay attention when that off-shore team was talking. It was all a waste of time for me. On the other hand, I have had standups where the scrum master (or product manager in the scrum master's absence) would keep the standups to 15 minutes, and if anyone went on too long or some conversation went on too long he said they should continue what they were saying after the standup, and anyone who needed to hear it could stay. Standups were brief, and sometimes productive if I heard something I needed to know, or was blocked on something and was offered help. And if I or someone else was still just plugging away on something, we would say "I worked on X, still working on X, no blockers" and the meeting moved on. Insofar as chat, some people get to the standup a minute or two early, and after the hour for the first minute people would still be joining the standup, and people would sometimes chat then.
striking 6y ago
If someone is working on something for a long time, they can explain what part of it they worked on, whether they need help, whether they're blocked, whether they need to adjust expectations, and so on. Long running tasks are a necessary evil, not the default state of the world, as they make planning work difficult. Giving people time to express that they are being blocked or that they need help with something increases the chances that they will feel empowered to ask for help or to be unblocked. It also aids in accountability and ensuring that people are getting their work done on time and as agreed with stakeholders, as well as giving other team members an opportunity to mitigate any such issue. On the other end, formalizing that it is short prevents it from turning into an unexpected retro or venting session or long-winded technical discussion better left for some other forum. Everyone should be able to give a quick update before any member of the team loses interest. There are reasons behind all of these things, and as aware as I am that not everyone agrees with every tenet of every leadership strategy, the "standup" as commonly formalized is actually really solid and I would expect a good reason not to employ it in the way that it typically is.
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
  > If someone is working on something for a long time, they can explain what part of it they worked on, whether they need help, whether they're blocked, whether they need to adjust expectations, and so on. Additionally, it may highlight that the team underestimated the size of a story or perhaps that the story should have been broken down further.
lmm 6y ago
It's good to have a regular reminder to take stock and see whether you're going down the wrong path. Since that often means asking the rest of your team a couple of questions, it's less disruptive if everyone does it at the same time.
sime2009 6y ago
The standup is daily opportunity for the team together to coordinate itself and the its work. It is not a status update where the workers have to report to the boss. That is not what you should be doing. > what if people are working on something for a bit longer than one day and got no news to tell or talk about? They can just say that they are busy on it. But now the team can coordinate. Maybe that feature is taking too long, and you should instead spend time on something more important. Maybe Jerry says "hey, I'm finishing up on issue XYZ. Now I can go help you with that long task." Maybe you are working on that long task, but hear that another team member has a problem which you know a lot about. Maybe someone in the team is thinking of starting a new issue which is related to your long task, in which case some coordination may be needed. Maybe someone thinks your long task is shouldn't be taking that long and they can afterwards help you out. It is easy to get stuff in a bog and not know it. Scrum is meant to be a team sport where members are helping and supporting each other.

pengaru 6y ago

When I last worked in an org with standups, whenever I intended to go head-down on something substantial I'd simply tell the vp of eng to not expect to hear from me or even see me for at least a few days until I have something substantial worth sharing on the subject. There was never any resistance there, and I've never encountered friction in that vein anywhere. No cto or vpe above me has ever wanted to get in the way of someone productive getting into a multi-day flow state anywhere I've bothered to work that hard. Peers or underlings however, the competition that is, it's a different story I mostly ignored. Having said that, I found standups to be a very obnoxious, passive-aggressive tool management used for dealing with folks unable to maintain a relevant and correctly prioritized todo list, and stay on task day-to-day. It's a group I've dabbled in being part of at some employers, and found quite unfulfilling and frustrating because management is way more meddlesome in that mode and individual leverage is practically nonexistent without playing the politics game well. YMMV

yowlingcat 6y ago
> It's a group I've dabbled in being part of at some employers, and found quite unfulfilling and frustrating because management is way more meddlesome in that mode and individual leverage is practically nonexistent without playing the politics game well. YMMV No kidding. Seeing this failure mode is unfortunate because it's not an immediate killer but it's a lethal one once it sinks its teeth in un-opposed.

lostcolony 6y ago

Then they say "I worked on X, still working on X, no blockers" and move on. A well run standup is a minute per person, max. It ensures everyone pulls their head up out of their work long enough to highlight obstacles that might effect delivery, or that someone else on the team might be able to help with, while also ensuring there aren't constant interruptions throughout the day.

teh_klev 6y ago
This ^^^ we do a 30 minute standup every morning (remotely) and it's mostly the same except we get about three mins per team member. It's also a good time to bring up issues if user stories/acceptance criteria aren't well enough refined after coming out of draft and that gets taken to another, usually short meeting with the PM's individually. In that 30 mins we also handle bug reports and assign blah blah blah. Those 30 mins are 100% focused to stuff people are working on, except for an initial 5 mins or so of chit chat. It's massively efficient and massively productive. So whatever the writer of this article was doing, it certainly wasn't a standup. I'm not big on prescriptive process, but a well organised standup is unbeatable.
- dingaling 6y ago
  > we do a 30 minute standup every morning If you wouldn't feel comfortable standing with a coffee for the duration of the standup then it's too long. 30 minutes is far too long and is well into conventional status-meeting territory. Aim for 10. Flip the premise of the meeting from "who's working on what" to "who's blocked by what". If there's no problem, say nothing. Not only does that save time, it is also more empowering for those with problems because they're not "swimming against the current" of those who are reporting their successes.
Mc91 6y ago
That's what we do as well. I have been in good standups and bad standups, sometimes at the same company. A bad week-after-week standup was one that dragged on and on, and started at 8AM because that was evening time for our off-shore team which the US team knew was going to be canned in a few weeks. Each person would go on and on, on a bad connection in a thick accent about what they were working on. Between the connection, and accent, and knowledge they were all junior and working on minor tickets and flubbing them and all soon to be getting axed, I did not pay attention when that off-shore team was talking. It was all a waste of time for me. On the other hand, I have had standups where the scrum master (or product manager in the scrum master's absence) would keep the standups to 15 minutes, and if anyone went on too long or some conversation went on too long he said they should continue what they were saying after the standup, and anyone who needed to hear it could stay. Standups were brief, and sometimes productive if I heard something I needed to know, or was blocked on something and was offered help. And if I or someone else was still just plugging away on something, we would say "I worked on X, still working on X, no blockers" and the meeting moved on. Insofar as chat, some people get to the standup a minute or two early, and after the hour for the first minute people would still be joining the standup, and people would sometimes chat then.

striking 6y ago

If someone is working on something for a long time, they can explain what part of it they worked on, whether they need help, whether they're blocked, whether they need to adjust expectations, and so on. Long running tasks are a necessary evil, not the default state of the world, as they make planning work difficult. Giving people time to express that they are being blocked or that they need help with something increases the chances that they will feel empowered to ask for help or to be unblocked. It also aids in accountability and ensuring that people are getting their work done on time and as agreed with stakeholders, as well as giving other team members an opportunity to mitigate any such issue. On the other end, formalizing that it is short prevents it from turning into an unexpected retro or venting session or long-winded technical discussion better left for some other forum. Everyone should be able to give a quick update before any member of the team loses interest. There are reasons behind all of these things, and as aware as I am that not everyone agrees with every tenet of every leadership strategy, the "standup" as commonly formalized is actually really solid and I would expect a good reason not to employ it in the way that it typically is.

brendoelfrendo 6y ago
> If someone is working on something for a long time, they can explain what part of it they worked on, whether they need help, whether they're blocked, whether they need to adjust expectations, and so on. Additionally, it may highlight that the team underestimated the size of a story or perhaps that the story should have been broken down further.

lmm 6y ago

It's good to have a regular reminder to take stock and see whether you're going down the wrong path. Since that often means asking the rest of your team a couple of questions, it's less disruptive if everyone does it at the same time.

sime2009 6y ago

The standup is daily opportunity for the team together to coordinate itself and the its work. It is not a status update where the workers have to report to the boss. That is not what you should be doing. > what if people are working on something for a bit longer than one day and got no news to tell or talk about? They can just say that they are busy on it. But now the team can coordinate. Maybe that feature is taking too long, and you should instead spend time on something more important. Maybe Jerry says "hey, I'm finishing up on issue XYZ. Now I can go help you with that long task." Maybe you are working on that long task, but hear that another team member has a problem which you know a lot about. Maybe someone in the team is thinking of starting a new issue which is related to your long task, in which case some coordination may be needed. Maybe someone thinks your long task is shouldn't be taking that long and they can afterwards help you out. It is easy to get stuff in a bog and not know it. Scrum is meant to be a team sport where members are helping and supporting each other.