29 ms·

Shitty standups are first the fault of the leader, and second the participants. If everyone limps into the meeting and 'phones it in' by repeating common respon

by 0des 5y ago

Shitty standups are first the fault of the leader, and second the participants. If everyone limps into the meeting and 'phones it in' by repeating common responses "uhh, work orders, reviewing PR's", then of course you'll get a weak result. Addressing standups as the sole issue completely ignores the holistic factors that influence the outcome. If a team is bored, undercompensated, overworked, undersupervised, then they're going to deliver shitty standups, and those standups will be a waste of time. When the participants are eager to provide a handoff of knowledge and prompt eachother for interchange, then you get the good standups that leave people racing back to their desks to build off of that synergy.

rightbyte 5y ago
> "uhh, work orders, reviewing PR's", then of course you'll get a weak result. What are you supposed to say then? Daily is way too ofent to have anything interesting to say. It is a low effort way for the manager to keep track on things and make people feel stupid for not doing progress in the maner the agile scoreboard dictates.
- 0des 5y ago
  Head's up - You might be one of the people detracting from your team's standup.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    If the team in general benefits from the daily stand-ups then you may be correct. Instead I see someone who questions the utility of this particular daily ritual. If others on the team feel the same way then it's more like they're calling the emperor naked.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    This doesn't address the issue of some participants perceiving the frequency of standups outpacing the amount of information worth sharing. Which is one of the largest recurring criticisms of standups.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      Then make them shorter! and make it OK to say "No Update". If you have nothing to summarize of value to your team in a 24 hr block, what are you doing all day?
      - xaedes 5y ago
        Somehow these last two sentences seem to contradict each other.
      - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
        Sometimes there just isn't much more to mention than "things are going well" or "things are done". Both of which I would expect a competent team to take as the default if nothing is being said, with the difference between the two shown through your list of issues / graphs / whatever people are using to track progress. At which point, if all you have to say is the default, it isn't that difficult to criticize the usefulness of doing things daily. On the other end, having to report things based on a timeframe that tight relative to the work done will quickly devolve towards finding things to report on, no matter how unnoteworthy. Teach people to speak up and show noteworthy things instead and have a bit of faith in your other metrics and report pipelines.
      - rimliu 5y ago
        So if the point is to gather and declare "no update" maybe there is no point, really? And if you have something else than "no update", why not to share it with relevant persons only, at any convenient time?
  - Clubber 5y ago
    The fact that its daily makes it like that. We do weekly meetings with biz then break off into our weekly dev meeting where we strategize. Valuable information gets communicated and we have no daily standups. If people need to talk, they use the group chat app or email or the phone. IMO, daily standup is a cultish ritual that rarely has value. Incoming downvotes!
    - wppick 5y ago
      Yes I can see your point. Why wait for a single point of day to bring up any issues or share information? Just do it immediately. We have tools to enable this (slack, teams, email, etc.). But, I do see the point of a daily sync up for team building, especially for remote teams.
      - skeeter2020 5y ago
        I hope teams aren't waiting for a daily stand-up to try and get unblocked, but there is definitely value in both sharing the summary of the blocker and publicly thanking anyone who helped unblock with the entire team. It (a) increases bus width, (b) builds the team and (c) takes 20 seconds.
        Jensson 5y ago
        > It (a) increases bus width, (b) builds the team and (c) takes 20 seconds. (d) creates a daily source of anxiety for developers who doesn't handle public speaking well. Which is a lot of them, but it is a shameful thing to admit.
      - Clubber 5y ago
        >Why wait for a single point of day to bring up any issues or share information? Nobody does this, they do it immediately, at least all the places I've worked. I need help, first I try to figure it out myself, then when I'm stuck or want to make sure I'm doing it right, I ask the owner of the code I'm working with. This makes standups not only redundant (information has already been shared) but distracting. >But, I do see the point of a daily sync up for team building, especially for remote teams. I've found it to be a morale killer more so than a morale booster. Fuck I gotta stop what I'm doing for this stupid standup, or I'm not gonna do anything because the standup is in 45 minutes; I'll just get distracted. I was once at a place where you actually stood up and the standups were 45 friggin minutes long. Total waste of time and I was so demoralized after it took me 30 minutes just to decompress and get stuff done. They would be slightly better if done on M-F-W or even more so on T-TH. Once a week meetings for about 30 minutes with biz then 30 minutes with dev works great for our team.
- zitterbewegung 5y ago
  If you don’t have anything interesting to say daily then how often would a stand up occur ? Biweekly? Weekly? Also see you working on one large project or a bunch of small projects ?
  - nzmsv 5y ago
    Ideally as close to never as possible. Just have meetings with people you are working on on an as needed basis.
  - nine_zeros 5y ago
    Once a week is fine.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > What are you supposed to say then? Which work orders? Which PRs? How much progress? Are they harder than expected? Easier? Any blockers? Anything that could help? Standup isn’t just for managers. It’s for ICs to also communicate their needs, obstacles, concerns, or even just give everyone a heads up that a certain task is more difficult than expected. If you’re just searching for the bare minimum to say to get your manager to move on to the next person, it’s a waste. It’s only a few minutes, so take advantage of it for some quick bidirectional communication.
  - playpause 5y ago
    What is an IC?
    - bosie 5y ago
      Individual Contributor
    - chaosite 5y ago
      Individual Contributor. A plain old developer, who does not manage other developers.
  - 0des 5y ago
    I'm always flabbergasted when someone asks what's the point. It would be a very different game if the captain on the field initiates the huddle and expects everyone to get jazzed about "ALRIGHT LETS THROW THE BALL SOME AND THEN WE WILL CATCH IT SOME AND THERE MAY BE RUNNING INVOLVED! LETS GO, ON THREE! ONE TWO THREE GO TEAM"
    - g051051 5y ago
      The huddle is play selection, not design. It's also often dictated by the coach. TBH, I wonder what point a huddle serves in modern football anyway. Just how much control to the players on the field have, anyway?
      - 5y ago
- remedan 5y ago
  In my team it is okay to just say "no update". We don't do dailies to justify that we aren't slacking off. Everybody trusts everybody else that they put in the work. Daily stand-ups are for coordinating with the other devs. E.g. "It will take a couple extra days to do this backend API that you are waiting for", "I'm a bit stuck, anybody will have free time today to pair program?", "Who is able to drop their low priority task so that the high priority one gets done on time?" If you're on track and don't neet anything, just "no updates today".
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    "Daily stand-ups are for coordinating with the other devs. E.g. "It will take a couple extra days to do this backend API that you are waiting for", "I'm a bit stuck, anybody will have free time today to pair program?", "Who is able to drop their low priority task so that the high priority one gets done on time?" " Why do you need standups for this? They should talk to each other directly.
    - higeorge13 5y ago
      Because sometimes devs might not be listening/talking to others, and just need someone to organize an offline discussion to unblock them. I have been to a team where X would need help on something that Y has solved in the past, Y does not care to listen in the standup and volunteer to help, and i had to ping him “Hey Y you have resolved this in the past, care to help X after the standup?” Shitty standups go bidirectional ways. Managers can make them terrible, but devs can do that as well.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Sounds like the relevant devs you mention just need to shoot the other a heads-up. The first 25 years of my career as a programmer we never had daily stand-ups, had never heard of them. We shipped. Something about all the "process" that has crept into the job over the last decade or so has really turned me off.
    - 0des 5y ago
hnrodey 5y ago
>Shitty standups are first the fault of the leader, There are no bad teams; only bad leaders. -Jocko Took me a long time to buy in to this but it's 100% true. Sucky standups are the direct result of an ineffective leader - whoever that may be.
- kotrunga 5y ago
  Woah- this is my first time seeing a Jocko quote on HN. Nice! And it makes sense- even if the team is "objectively bad", a good leader will help transform them.
alkonaut 5y ago
A process that works well for motivated, skilled developers working on a clean codebase is... any process. I agree with your sentiment that it's a problem of skill and motivation - but that said, the usual problem to solve with any process is: how do you make your day to day operations as efficient as possible given the level of skill, codebase quality and motivation you do have, not the one you want. Developers (on average) are only average. Code bases aren't great. Motivation will vary. So it's a chicken and egg problem. If the reality is that the developers are tired underpaid undersupervised and undermotivated. All that could change, but it would take time. The process happens now.
qaq 5y ago
I postulate that presence of mngmnt bs speak at levels below VP level will cause shitty standups :)
nivertech 5y ago
Good leaders will never do standups by their own choice. They will only do them if they're dictated by the company, or the the team members are unable to work and communicate independently and requiring constant micromanagement. The latter is usually a case when the team members are provided by the outsourcing company, or they're some kind of "team extension".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by 0des 5y ago

rightbyte 5y ago

> "uhh, work orders, reviewing PR's", then of course you'll get a weak result. What are you supposed to say then? Daily is way too ofent to have anything interesting to say. It is a low effort way for the manager to keep track on things and make people feel stupid for not doing progress in the maner the agile scoreboard dictates.

0des 5y ago
Head's up - You might be one of the people detracting from your team's standup.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  If the team in general benefits from the daily stand-ups then you may be correct. Instead I see someone who questions the utility of this particular daily ritual. If others on the team feel the same way then it's more like they're calling the emperor naked.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  This doesn't address the issue of some participants perceiving the frequency of standups outpacing the amount of information worth sharing. Which is one of the largest recurring criticisms of standups.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    Then make them shorter! and make it OK to say "No Update". If you have nothing to summarize of value to your team in a 24 hr block, what are you doing all day?
    - xaedes 5y ago
      Somehow these last two sentences seem to contradict each other.
    - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
      Sometimes there just isn't much more to mention than "things are going well" or "things are done". Both of which I would expect a competent team to take as the default if nothing is being said, with the difference between the two shown through your list of issues / graphs / whatever people are using to track progress. At which point, if all you have to say is the default, it isn't that difficult to criticize the usefulness of doing things daily. On the other end, having to report things based on a timeframe that tight relative to the work done will quickly devolve towards finding things to report on, no matter how unnoteworthy. Teach people to speak up and show noteworthy things instead and have a bit of faith in your other metrics and report pipelines.
    - rimliu 5y ago
      So if the point is to gather and declare "no update" maybe there is no point, really? And if you have something else than "no update", why not to share it with relevant persons only, at any convenient time?
- Clubber 5y ago
  The fact that its daily makes it like that. We do weekly meetings with biz then break off into our weekly dev meeting where we strategize. Valuable information gets communicated and we have no daily standups. If people need to talk, they use the group chat app or email or the phone. IMO, daily standup is a cultish ritual that rarely has value. Incoming downvotes!
  - wppick 5y ago
    Yes I can see your point. Why wait for a single point of day to bring up any issues or share information? Just do it immediately. We have tools to enable this (slack, teams, email, etc.). But, I do see the point of a daily sync up for team building, especially for remote teams.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      I hope teams aren't waiting for a daily stand-up to try and get unblocked, but there is definitely value in both sharing the summary of the blocker and publicly thanking anyone who helped unblock with the entire team. It (a) increases bus width, (b) builds the team and (c) takes 20 seconds.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        > It (a) increases bus width, (b) builds the team and (c) takes 20 seconds. (d) creates a daily source of anxiety for developers who doesn't handle public speaking well. Which is a lot of them, but it is a shameful thing to admit.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >Why wait for a single point of day to bring up any issues or share information? Nobody does this, they do it immediately, at least all the places I've worked. I need help, first I try to figure it out myself, then when I'm stuck or want to make sure I'm doing it right, I ask the owner of the code I'm working with. This makes standups not only redundant (information has already been shared) but distracting. >But, I do see the point of a daily sync up for team building, especially for remote teams. I've found it to be a morale killer more so than a morale booster. Fuck I gotta stop what I'm doing for this stupid standup, or I'm not gonna do anything because the standup is in 45 minutes; I'll just get distracted. I was once at a place where you actually stood up and the standups were 45 friggin minutes long. Total waste of time and I was so demoralized after it took me 30 minutes just to decompress and get stuff done. They would be slightly better if done on M-F-W or even more so on T-TH. Once a week meetings for about 30 minutes with biz then 30 minutes with dev works great for our team.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
If you don’t have anything interesting to say daily then how often would a stand up occur ? Biweekly? Weekly? Also see you working on one large project or a bunch of small projects ?
- nzmsv 5y ago
  Ideally as close to never as possible. Just have meetings with people you are working on on an as needed basis.
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  Once a week is fine.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> What are you supposed to say then? Which work orders? Which PRs? How much progress? Are they harder than expected? Easier? Any blockers? Anything that could help? Standup isn’t just for managers. It’s for ICs to also communicate their needs, obstacles, concerns, or even just give everyone a heads up that a certain task is more difficult than expected. If you’re just searching for the bare minimum to say to get your manager to move on to the next person, it’s a waste. It’s only a few minutes, so take advantage of it for some quick bidirectional communication.
- playpause 5y ago
  What is an IC?
  - bosie 5y ago
    Individual Contributor
  - chaosite 5y ago
    Individual Contributor. A plain old developer, who does not manage other developers.
- 0des 5y ago
  I'm always flabbergasted when someone asks what's the point. It would be a very different game if the captain on the field initiates the huddle and expects everyone to get jazzed about "ALRIGHT LETS THROW THE BALL SOME AND THEN WE WILL CATCH IT SOME AND THERE MAY BE RUNNING INVOLVED! LETS GO, ON THREE! ONE TWO THREE GO TEAM"
  - g051051 5y ago
    The huddle is play selection, not design. It's also often dictated by the coach. TBH, I wonder what point a huddle serves in modern football anyway. Just how much control to the players on the field have, anyway?
    - 5y ago
remedan 5y ago
In my team it is okay to just say "no update". We don't do dailies to justify that we aren't slacking off. Everybody trusts everybody else that they put in the work. Daily stand-ups are for coordinating with the other devs. E.g. "It will take a couple extra days to do this backend API that you are waiting for", "I'm a bit stuck, anybody will have free time today to pair program?", "Who is able to drop their low priority task so that the high priority one gets done on time?" If you're on track and don't neet anything, just "no updates today".
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  "Daily stand-ups are for coordinating with the other devs. E.g. "It will take a couple extra days to do this backend API that you are waiting for", "I'm a bit stuck, anybody will have free time today to pair program?", "Who is able to drop their low priority task so that the high priority one gets done on time?" " Why do you need standups for this? They should talk to each other directly.
  - higeorge13 5y ago
    Because sometimes devs might not be listening/talking to others, and just need someone to organize an offline discussion to unblock them. I have been to a team where X would need help on something that Y has solved in the past, Y does not care to listen in the standup and volunteer to help, and i had to ping him “Hey Y you have resolved this in the past, care to help X after the standup?” Shitty standups go bidirectional ways. Managers can make them terrible, but devs can do that as well.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Sounds like the relevant devs you mention just need to shoot the other a heads-up. The first 25 years of my career as a programmer we never had daily stand-ups, had never heard of them. We shipped. Something about all the "process" that has crept into the job over the last decade or so has really turned me off.
  - 0des 5y ago

hnrodey 5y ago

>Shitty standups are first the fault of the leader, There are no bad teams; only bad leaders. -Jocko Took me a long time to buy in to this but it's 100% true. Sucky standups are the direct result of an ineffective leader - whoever that may be.

kotrunga 5y ago
Woah- this is my first time seeing a Jocko quote on HN. Nice! And it makes sense- even if the team is "objectively bad", a good leader will help transform them.

alkonaut 5y ago

A process that works well for motivated, skilled developers working on a clean codebase is... any process. I agree with your sentiment that it's a problem of skill and motivation - but that said, the usual problem to solve with any process is: how do you make your day to day operations as efficient as possible given the level of skill, codebase quality and motivation you do have, not the one you want. Developers (on average) are only average. Code bases aren't great. Motivation will vary. So it's a chicken and egg problem. If the reality is that the developers are tired underpaid undersupervised and undermotivated. All that could change, but it would take time. The process happens now.

qaq 5y ago

I postulate that presence of mngmnt bs speak at levels below VP level will cause shitty standups :)

nivertech 5y ago

Good leaders will never do standups by their own choice. They will only do them if they're dictated by the company, or the the team members are unable to work and communicate independently and requiring constant micromanagement. The latter is usually a case when the team members are provided by the outsourcing company, or they're some kind of "team extension".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]