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Coming up on 30 years. I agree with most of your observations except standups. In my experience daily standups are a waste of time. Maybe I've just had bad luck

Coming up on 30 years. I agree with most of your observations except standups. In my experience daily standups are a waste of time. Maybe I've just had bad luck with them?

silentsea90 6y ago
10 minutes is hardly an investment in both ensuring devs share a goal they're committed to at the start of the day, and that devs aren't going down the wrong path, and people are in sync. I have had many standups where days of person X's time was saved by person Y offering a suggestion on how to do a certain task. Don't let a standup go beyond 10 minutes. X and Y in the above example should sync after the standup separately in case their discussion is longer than the duration of the standup
- joseph_grobbles 6y ago
  "10 minutes" Are you the only one attending or something? Standups are initially scheduled for the start of the development day. But then people come in a little late, get that first minute call, have to attend to something that hiccupped, so soon enough the standup happens 30 minutes into the day, eventually an hour into the day. So if you did get there on time, now you just spin your wheel waiting, because first you've got that obnoxious standup that's going to disrupt everything. Now you get there and spend ten minutes waiting for everyone to assemble, and for the S.C.R.U.M.Master to pull Jira up on the overhead. Finally you get going and everyone has an essay about their herculean effort putting a button on a form, which absolutely no one is listening to. You have the manager (because really they're a garbage way of managing) interjecting and asking questions. You have someone say something dumb they're doing and everyone gets to stand there while two people who could have taken it offline have a conversation. 40 minutes later you go back to your desk. Invariably the standup aficionados (almost universally shitty managers) will say "you're doing it wrong!", but what I just described is the standup reality virtually everywhere. EDIT: Exactly as expected, I made the mistake of actually replying to people who questioned my comment, which means when some angry person comes along they get to downvote all of them. That aspect of HN is weak sauce.
  - Rapzid 6y ago
    > virtually everywhere I've never experienced that in the 7-8 companies I've worked at over the past 10 years.
    - joseph_grobbles 6y ago
      At the last 7-8 companies I've worked at, I've described exactly how it has been. I have been personally responsible for eliminating them at the last 4 orgs. They were an echo of shitty management. And I'm hardly alone in observing this being a common pattern.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    In the one job where standups went well, our limit was 15 minutes, for about 7 developers. > Standups are initially scheduled for the start of the development day. There's no reason it should. We did not have it at that time. If it's at a reasonable time (e.g. after all people have normally begun work), then have a low tolerance policy for those who come late. Sometimes our standups were about 5 minutes, because some people were on vacation and some were late. When the late people showed up, it would be to an empty room. We didn't wait for them beyond 1 minute. There's no way we would tolerate 30 minutes, let alone an hour. If it was going beyond 15 minutes, many/most of the developers would abruptly leave. You have to have an idea what you're going to say before you enter the room, and not go into technical details - the standup is not a problem solving session. People who randomly droned in giving their update would be "coached". For a while we had the manager in the room. Then we booted him out - he was no longer welcome (it was an amicable parting :-) ). > but what I just described is the standup reality virtually everywhere. I can believe your experience is more common than mine, but I can also say I wouldn't work with such sloppiness in the team. In our case, our team wasn't the standout. This discipline was drilled in at the organizational level and had support from the leaders. It may sound bad the way I write it, but it was actually very easy to cultivate this culture, and everyone liked it. This was literally the easiest and simplest part of the work day. Edit: Lest this come off as a pro-scrum comment, I assure you it's not. There are things I don't like about Scrum, and am not sure I'd like to go back to working scrum-style. However, the complaints in the parent post are not problems with scrum, but cultural problems. As one of the pro-scrum people in my company put it: "I'm not really sure Scrum does a great job in improving productivity. But it's excellent at exposing existing problems in teams."
- username90 6y ago
  Standups makes sense if people work close together on a fast moving project. They don't make sense for people who work on unrelated things or projects that move slowly. Then they just become a "who did the most last day?" bragging session since nobody has any use of the information of what others did that is all it can be used for, and when that happens all it achieves is hurting team morale.
Igelau 6y ago
The problems creep in if they get too big. Too many people and it's a huge waste of time. If non devs are sneaking in, they shouldn't be permitted to speak.
- TecoAndJix 6y ago
  I love stand ups but agree they need to stay small. When the audience is too large it becomes an exercise in bragging and is not functional.
detaro 6y ago
Like many things, IMHO they are a good idea that a) is not needed for every team and b) should not be overloaded. But like every agile software idea they often become a big-A "Agile" thing that's done, often with little consideration if it's done in a useful way, but just because it's the thing that's to be done and gets overloaded with stuff someone wants to do. So I'd say it's both yes, you've had "bad luck" in a way, but at the same time that's kinda the norm in many places.
joseph_grobbles 6y ago
They mention that it's "useful for keeping an eye on the newbies", which indicts standups. That is a positively horrendous justification for standups. Your "newbies" should have assigned mentors and helping hands, and that shouldn't be something that drags down everyone. Standups are a shitty, passive-aggressive way of managing. Managers who are too weak/incapable of simply monitoring progress, asking questions instead make this whole show under the assumption that everyone is checking on each other. 100% of the time this is the justification for standups. In many firms, "agile" is a failure mode for "waterfall".
gryn 6y ago
agree, what I found useful although I kinda hated at first, was slack messages at the end of the day where I was asked what I did for the day (sometimes followed by what I'll be doing for the next). this includes blockers and other related aspects, like wether I need some aditional manpower for the task at hand. it was in private messages so it avoided wasting other people's time or distracting them.
dbattaglia 6y ago
Same here. At my current job it’s literally impossible for my team to pull off as we’re spread across North and South America, Europe, Japan and New Zealand. Instead we have two weekly meetings, one friendlier to western countries and the other better for Asia pacific, both recorded, where we review agenda items added (by anyone who wants to add something, including folks at other teams) and then a quick review of major team projects status. I personally find it much more productive than a 15-30 minute scrum stand up where people either say “same as yesterday” or drone on for 5 minutes straight, depending on their personality.

Coming up on 30 years. I agree with most of your observations except standups. In my experience daily standups are a waste of time. Maybe I've just had bad luck with them?

silentsea90 6y ago

10 minutes is hardly an investment in both ensuring devs share a goal they're committed to at the start of the day, and that devs aren't going down the wrong path, and people are in sync. I have had many standups where days of person X's time was saved by person Y offering a suggestion on how to do a certain task. Don't let a standup go beyond 10 minutes. X and Y in the above example should sync after the standup separately in case their discussion is longer than the duration of the standup

joseph_grobbles 6y ago
"10 minutes" Are you the only one attending or something? Standups are initially scheduled for the start of the development day. But then people come in a little late, get that first minute call, have to attend to something that hiccupped, so soon enough the standup happens 30 minutes into the day, eventually an hour into the day. So if you did get there on time, now you just spin your wheel waiting, because first you've got that obnoxious standup that's going to disrupt everything. Now you get there and spend ten minutes waiting for everyone to assemble, and for the S.C.R.U.M.Master to pull Jira up on the overhead. Finally you get going and everyone has an essay about their herculean effort putting a button on a form, which absolutely no one is listening to. You have the manager (because really they're a garbage way of managing) interjecting and asking questions. You have someone say something dumb they're doing and everyone gets to stand there while two people who could have taken it offline have a conversation. 40 minutes later you go back to your desk. Invariably the standup aficionados (almost universally shitty managers) will say "you're doing it wrong!", but what I just described is the standup reality virtually everywhere. EDIT: Exactly as expected, I made the mistake of actually replying to people who questioned my comment, which means when some angry person comes along they get to downvote all of them. That aspect of HN is weak sauce.
- Rapzid 6y ago
  > virtually everywhere I've never experienced that in the 7-8 companies I've worked at over the past 10 years.
  - joseph_grobbles 6y ago
    At the last 7-8 companies I've worked at, I've described exactly how it has been. I have been personally responsible for eliminating them at the last 4 orgs. They were an echo of shitty management. And I'm hardly alone in observing this being a common pattern.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  In the one job where standups went well, our limit was 15 minutes, for about 7 developers. > Standups are initially scheduled for the start of the development day. There's no reason it should. We did not have it at that time. If it's at a reasonable time (e.g. after all people have normally begun work), then have a low tolerance policy for those who come late. Sometimes our standups were about 5 minutes, because some people were on vacation and some were late. When the late people showed up, it would be to an empty room. We didn't wait for them beyond 1 minute. There's no way we would tolerate 30 minutes, let alone an hour. If it was going beyond 15 minutes, many/most of the developers would abruptly leave. You have to have an idea what you're going to say before you enter the room, and not go into technical details - the standup is not a problem solving session. People who randomly droned in giving their update would be "coached". For a while we had the manager in the room. Then we booted him out - he was no longer welcome (it was an amicable parting :-) ). > but what I just described is the standup reality virtually everywhere. I can believe your experience is more common than mine, but I can also say I wouldn't work with such sloppiness in the team. In our case, our team wasn't the standout. This discipline was drilled in at the organizational level and had support from the leaders. It may sound bad the way I write it, but it was actually very easy to cultivate this culture, and everyone liked it. This was literally the easiest and simplest part of the work day. Edit: Lest this come off as a pro-scrum comment, I assure you it's not. There are things I don't like about Scrum, and am not sure I'd like to go back to working scrum-style. However, the complaints in the parent post are not problems with scrum, but cultural problems. As one of the pro-scrum people in my company put it: "I'm not really sure Scrum does a great job in improving productivity. But it's excellent at exposing existing problems in teams."
username90 6y ago
Standups makes sense if people work close together on a fast moving project. They don't make sense for people who work on unrelated things or projects that move slowly. Then they just become a "who did the most last day?" bragging session since nobody has any use of the information of what others did that is all it can be used for, and when that happens all it achieves is hurting team morale.

Igelau 6y ago

The problems creep in if they get too big. Too many people and it's a huge waste of time. If non devs are sneaking in, they shouldn't be permitted to speak.

TecoAndJix 6y ago
I love stand ups but agree they need to stay small. When the audience is too large it becomes an exercise in bragging and is not functional.

detaro 6y ago

Like many things, IMHO they are a good idea that a) is not needed for every team and b) should not be overloaded. But like every agile software idea they often become a big-A "Agile" thing that's done, often with little consideration if it's done in a useful way, but just because it's the thing that's to be done and gets overloaded with stuff someone wants to do. So I'd say it's both yes, you've had "bad luck" in a way, but at the same time that's kinda the norm in many places.

joseph_grobbles 6y ago

They mention that it's "useful for keeping an eye on the newbies", which indicts standups. That is a positively horrendous justification for standups. Your "newbies" should have assigned mentors and helping hands, and that shouldn't be something that drags down everyone. Standups are a shitty, passive-aggressive way of managing. Managers who are too weak/incapable of simply monitoring progress, asking questions instead make this whole show under the assumption that everyone is checking on each other. 100% of the time this is the justification for standups. In many firms, "agile" is a failure mode for "waterfall".

gryn 6y ago

agree, what I found useful although I kinda hated at first, was slack messages at the end of the day where I was asked what I did for the day (sometimes followed by what I'll be doing for the next). this includes blockers and other related aspects, like wether I need some aditional manpower for the task at hand. it was in private messages so it avoided wasting other people's time or distracting them.

dbattaglia 6y ago

Same here. At my current job it’s literally impossible for my team to pull off as we’re spread across North and South America, Europe, Japan and New Zealand. Instead we have two weekly meetings, one friendlier to western countries and the other better for Asia pacific, both recorded, where we review agenda items added (by anyone who wants to add something, including folks at other teams) and then a quick review of major team projects status. I personally find it much more productive than a 15-30 minute scrum stand up where people either say “same as yesterday” or drone on for 5 minutes straight, depending on their personality.