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It’s good to hear that stand-up culture appears to work for some. Personally, I have never worked anywhere where I extracted even the least bit of useful inform

by hrbf 5y ago

It’s good to hear that stand-up culture appears to work for some. Personally, I have never worked anywhere where I extracted even the least bit of useful information from one. Every single one has been a complete waste of my time. The worst ones actually cost me motivation and concentration. Every single one happened because the project manager wanted it or the lead programmer (who, for all intents and purposes, was a manager at that point) used it as a daily status meeting. At its most absurd, at one company, it took 30 minutes or more, on a daily basis, to listen to inconsequential (to me) stuff. To say my line took less than a minute on most days and the others almost always used this meeting to start discussions that needed to be shut down. Which of course lead to more meetings.

zerocount 5y ago
This has been my experience as well.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
Calling a meeting a "daily stand-up" does not make it so. That's the problem with using buzz words. Many complaints, and this article is no exception, are not about canonical "daily stand-ups" but about the meetings people experience in their team or their lack of understanding what the aim of "daily stand-ups" are and what problems they propose to solve. Agile favours face-to-face communication because it's the most effective for quick discussions. The format of the "daily stand-up" is also specifically designed to focus attention of the participants and to make it quick. It is not meant to be a project or status meeting. Ultimately organizations decide what's best for them but it useful to gather a good understanding of those rituals before trying them out and criticising them.
- hrbf 5y ago
  I agree. I used to subscribe to the “agile” way of doing things —- only to discover that in reality, just some rituals are implemented, like stand-ups that are meetings and retrospectives that lead to zero change because the pain points are institutional. This is just a hollow, pointless waste of time for the sake of appearing “modern” on the very surface. Doing things properly would require far too much change to the status quo. Hence my point: it seems like a good idea, appears to work given the proper circumstances but simply does not most of the time, given the reality of many workplaces.

by hrbf 5y ago

zerocount 5y ago

This has been my experience as well.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

Calling a meeting a "daily stand-up" does not make it so. That's the problem with using buzz words. Many complaints, and this article is no exception, are not about canonical "daily stand-ups" but about the meetings people experience in their team or their lack of understanding what the aim of "daily stand-ups" are and what problems they propose to solve. Agile favours face-to-face communication because it's the most effective for quick discussions. The format of the "daily stand-up" is also specifically designed to focus attention of the participants and to make it quick. It is not meant to be a project or status meeting. Ultimately organizations decide what's best for them but it useful to gather a good understanding of those rituals before trying them out and criticising them.

hrbf 5y ago
I agree. I used to subscribe to the “agile” way of doing things —- only to discover that in reality, just some rituals are implemented, like stand-ups that are meetings and retrospectives that lead to zero change because the pain points are institutional. This is just a hollow, pointless waste of time for the sake of appearing “modern” on the very surface. Doing things properly would require far too much change to the status quo. Hence my point: it seems like a good idea, appears to work given the proper circumstances but simply does not most of the time, given the reality of many workplaces.