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Most of that calendar is pointless time wasting guff that benefits nobody. Stand ups should last no more than 10 minutes and a middle manager has no place at t

Most of that calendar is pointless time wasting guff that benefits nobody. Stand ups should last no more than 10 minutes and a middle manager has no place at them any more than occasionally. Status updates should be slack messages or emails. Sync ups are just filler. 121s aren't necessary any more than monthly unless directly mentoring someone. Daily post mortems tell you something is broken with your organisation that needs fixing at least one level of abstraction higher. You could put every recurring meeting in that calendar in the bin and there'd be no loss to the business, probably a significant gain for having time to do things. This is a broken organisation.

dustintrex 5y ago
Have you tried onboarding a new direct report fully remotely during a pandemic? A monthly 1:1 is not going to cut it. Also, a manager has to be aware of what's happening in his team, so he can both advocate it upwards and remove blockers as they arise. "Doing things" by itself doesn't get you very far if the higher-ups never hear about it.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I think you and the GP are both right (and wrong). On-boarding via a monthly 1:1 is most definitely not going to work, but this should probably be a team responsibility anyways. As a manager I do pay closer attention during this period but the new hire's buddy is the contact point, our process & documentation is the guide and team leads and senior devs do all the pairing and presenting. You're definitely right about the advocating and facilitating IMO; equivalent to a code smell is managers who do regular coding in their daily work. It's a great way to build empathy but it's not your job.
notjustanymike 5y ago
We switched daily standup to a slack channel and it works great. Everyone posts before 12 and discussion is handled in the threads. That's a lot of time reclaimed.
- jameshart 5y ago
  Careful. One of the valuable things a standup huddle enforces is that the team decides together what to do for the day, then heads off and spends the rest Of the day doing. If you remove the time box and let decisionmaking drift into slack threads, you risk not making decisions and not doing. Stand ups should be action oriented planning conversations, not passive status sharing. They need to end with decisions made.
  - notjustanymike 5y ago
    In theory I agree, and what works for one team may not work for another (Scrum and Agile are just a starting point). We do a decent amount of up-front planning before committing to work, so day-to-day there aren't a ton of directional decisions left to make. So what works for us are two questions: - What are you working on? - What are your blockers?
  - bradlys 5y ago
    > Stand ups should be action oriented planning conversations, not passive status sharing. They need to end with decisions made. Yet most stand ups I’ve been a part of at big and small companies are nothing more than status updates. Unfortunately, I’d guess the “stand ups” that the manager is doing here are the same and thus why they take 30 minutes.

dustintrex 5y ago

Have you tried onboarding a new direct report fully remotely during a pandemic? A monthly 1:1 is not going to cut it. Also, a manager has to be aware of what's happening in his team, so he can both advocate it upwards and remove blockers as they arise. "Doing things" by itself doesn't get you very far if the higher-ups never hear about it.

skeeter2020 5y ago
I think you and the GP are both right (and wrong). On-boarding via a monthly 1:1 is most definitely not going to work, but this should probably be a team responsibility anyways. As a manager I do pay closer attention during this period but the new hire's buddy is the contact point, our process & documentation is the guide and team leads and senior devs do all the pairing and presenting. You're definitely right about the advocating and facilitating IMO; equivalent to a code smell is managers who do regular coding in their daily work. It's a great way to build empathy but it's not your job.

notjustanymike 5y ago

We switched daily standup to a slack channel and it works great. Everyone posts before 12 and discussion is handled in the threads. That's a lot of time reclaimed.

jameshart 5y ago
Careful. One of the valuable things a standup huddle enforces is that the team decides together what to do for the day, then heads off and spends the rest Of the day doing. If you remove the time box and let decisionmaking drift into slack threads, you risk not making decisions and not doing. Stand ups should be action oriented planning conversations, not passive status sharing. They need to end with decisions made.
- notjustanymike 5y ago
  In theory I agree, and what works for one team may not work for another (Scrum and Agile are just a starting point). We do a decent amount of up-front planning before committing to work, so day-to-day there aren't a ton of directional decisions left to make. So what works for us are two questions: - What are you working on? - What are your blockers?
- bradlys 5y ago
  > Stand ups should be action oriented planning conversations, not passive status sharing. They need to end with decisions made. Yet most stand ups I’ve been a part of at big and small companies are nothing more than status updates. Unfortunately, I’d guess the “stand ups” that the manager is doing here are the same and thus why they take 30 minutes.