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So that’s the thing: a standup isn’t for discussing what you’re doing, it’s to ensure that things are on track (which the default assumption is they are) and a

by dchuk 6y ago

So that’s the thing: a standup isn’t for discussing what you’re doing, it’s to ensure that things are on track (which the default assumption is they are) and a forum for surfacing blockers/impediments to sort out offline. Assuming you have a Kanban board for your work, and assuming the work is actually accurate on the board in terms of status (which most teams are terrible at without practice) AND assuming you properly have “waiting for testing” “testing” “waiting for review” “reviewing” columns (those waiting for columns are critical to seeing the true state of work), then you simply just “walk the wall” from right to left. As you scan through each column, team members call out if shit is a mess, otherwise you just get a thumbs up and move to the next thing. Then, just use some analytics to highlight tickets stuck in a status too long, and bubble those up in the standup. “You keep saying this is on track, but it’s been here for a week, what’s the deal?”. STANDUPS ARE NOT STATUS UPDATES. They’re for resolving blockers in person without letting shit linger too long. As long as your board is accurate and respected as the source of truth, it is the status update mechanism. It’s no longer a human job. (And yes, this is actually possibly, my agility team does this with 15+ scrumban teams right now)

andrewcarter 6y ago
I hated standups until we eventually got a great PM who moved to something like this, and now I try hard and make standup run like this on any project I'm on. Jira has this nice feature where it puts a little dot on something for each day it's in a column. Standups largely turned into scanning for things that had > 2 dots on a ticket from right to left, and discussing what we needed to do to keep things moving through the system. Love it!
- hackerm0nkey 6y ago
  interesting to see this becoming part of the tools. In 2012, I was on project were we used a physical board, and we would make a black circle for everyday on the board and once we started exceeding the initial estimate (it was done in days as opposed to complexity for some reason) we make that in red, then we started discussing the reds
DJHenk 6y ago
> STANDUPS ARE NOT STATUS UPDATES. They’re for resolving blockers in person without letting shit linger too long. Which means "real" standups are completely useless. Let's say we have it every day at 9:30 and I get stuck at 11:00. Does anyone really expect me to wait almost a whole day to get help, or should I just go talk to someone about it right away like a normal adult would? So... what type of question or blocker is so unimportant that it can wait for a day to get resolved, but at the same time is so important that we need the whole team to stop working and discuss it?
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  1. Standups are a place to make people aware of problems, not the only place. 2. You don’t discuss problems at a standup, you make your team aware (if you haven’t already) and organise a separate session with only the interested people.
  - sdevonoes 6y ago
    > You don’t discuss problems at a standup, you make your team aware (if you haven’t already) Exactly my point. We make the team aware of problems of blockers via Slack (team channel), so there is no point in making the team aware again of such blockers in the standup.
    - tupputuppu 6y ago
      Based on my experience sharing things in-person is much more productive. I think you're looking from a developer perspective and thinking "how can I produce as much functionality without being impeded", which is your point of view. The scrum master is likely thinking "how can we ensure the whole team has an optimal flow" and ensuring such blockers are dealt with as effectively as possible, which is more important. Granted, most scrum masters have no idea what they're doing which likely leads to individual team members not seeing fulle value in Agile rituals, but it is there.
      - hackerm0nkey 6y ago
addicted 6y ago
Except stand ups rarely come across as a way to ensure things are on track, and more as a way to CYA about things being on track, so that someone can place the blame on you about why you didn’t inform the team earlier on the day you realize things are not on track.
sdevonoes 6y ago
> STANDUPS ARE NOT STATUS UPDATES. They’re for resolving blockers in person without letting shit linger too long. Which make standups useless. If I have blockers I communicate them right away. I don't wait until the next standup to do so.
- matsemann 6y ago
  I think most people do. But then what? Just let it be for a week and never follow up? Having a daily reminder and time to discuss it is nice.
- oldprogrammer2 6y ago
  Unfortunately, many engineers will consider themselves “blocked” after doing only 5 minutes of research and deciding they needed to interrupt someone else’s work for help. They are concerned only with their own productivity, not with the productivity of other team members who have to context switch to solve a different problem. A standup encourages people to solve their own problems as best as they can, and to aggregate their interruptions to limit the number of individual interruptions throughout the day. Without a system like this, a team’s senior engineers may get nothing done besides assisting others.
mihaaly 6y ago
Isn't a reliable person supposed to tell when an obstacle is met but carry on otherwise? Raise an event when something happened and only when it happened, not polling him/her constantly about it? ; ) Seems like a waste activity when raising issues is limited to a particular time period during the day and supposed to be happening on its own anyway. It is not good for meaningful discussions, it is not enough and not the place for socializing, constraining or repeating something to/at a specific time that should occur otherwise.

by dchuk 6y ago

andrewcarter 6y ago

I hated standups until we eventually got a great PM who moved to something like this, and now I try hard and make standup run like this on any project I'm on. Jira has this nice feature where it puts a little dot on something for each day it's in a column. Standups largely turned into scanning for things that had > 2 dots on a ticket from right to left, and discussing what we needed to do to keep things moving through the system. Love it!

hackerm0nkey 6y ago
interesting to see this becoming part of the tools. In 2012, I was on project were we used a physical board, and we would make a black circle for everyday on the board and once we started exceeding the initial estimate (it was done in days as opposed to complexity for some reason) we make that in red, then we started discussing the reds

DJHenk 6y ago

> STANDUPS ARE NOT STATUS UPDATES. They’re for resolving blockers in person without letting shit linger too long. Which means "real" standups are completely useless. Let's say we have it every day at 9:30 and I get stuck at 11:00. Does anyone really expect me to wait almost a whole day to get help, or should I just go talk to someone about it right away like a normal adult would? So... what type of question or blocker is so unimportant that it can wait for a day to get resolved, but at the same time is so important that we need the whole team to stop working and discuss it?

iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
1. Standups are a place to make people aware of problems, not the only place. 2. You don’t discuss problems at a standup, you make your team aware (if you haven’t already) and organise a separate session with only the interested people.
- sdevonoes 6y ago
  > You don’t discuss problems at a standup, you make your team aware (if you haven’t already) Exactly my point. We make the team aware of problems of blockers via Slack (team channel), so there is no point in making the team aware again of such blockers in the standup.
  - tupputuppu 6y ago
    Based on my experience sharing things in-person is much more productive. I think you're looking from a developer perspective and thinking "how can I produce as much functionality without being impeded", which is your point of view. The scrum master is likely thinking "how can we ensure the whole team has an optimal flow" and ensuring such blockers are dealt with as effectively as possible, which is more important. Granted, most scrum masters have no idea what they're doing which likely leads to individual team members not seeing fulle value in Agile rituals, but it is there.
    - hackerm0nkey 6y ago

addicted 6y ago

Except stand ups rarely come across as a way to ensure things are on track, and more as a way to CYA about things being on track, so that someone can place the blame on you about why you didn’t inform the team earlier on the day you realize things are not on track.

sdevonoes 6y ago

> STANDUPS ARE NOT STATUS UPDATES. They’re for resolving blockers in person without letting shit linger too long. Which make standups useless. If I have blockers I communicate them right away. I don't wait until the next standup to do so.

matsemann 6y ago
I think most people do. But then what? Just let it be for a week and never follow up? Having a daily reminder and time to discuss it is nice.
oldprogrammer2 6y ago
Unfortunately, many engineers will consider themselves “blocked” after doing only 5 minutes of research and deciding they needed to interrupt someone else’s work for help. They are concerned only with their own productivity, not with the productivity of other team members who have to context switch to solve a different problem. A standup encourages people to solve their own problems as best as they can, and to aggregate their interruptions to limit the number of individual interruptions throughout the day. Without a system like this, a team’s senior engineers may get nothing done besides assisting others.

mihaaly 6y ago

Isn't a reliable person supposed to tell when an obstacle is met but carry on otherwise? Raise an event when something happened and only when it happened, not polling him/her constantly about it? ; ) Seems like a waste activity when raising issues is limited to a particular time period during the day and supposed to be happening on its own anyway. It is not good for meaningful discussions, it is not enough and not the place for socializing, constraining or repeating something to/at a specific time that should occur otherwise.