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Head's up - You might be one of the people detracting from your team's standup.

by 0des 5y ago

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.

Head's up - You might be one of the people detracting from your team's standup.

by 0des 5y ago

Head's up - You might be one of the people detracting from your team's standup.

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.