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Five seconds to say and two hours of lost productivity from the context switch required to hear it[0]. And I still don't care. What am I going to do with the in

Five seconds to say and two hours of lost productivity from the context switch required to hear it[0]. And I still don't care. What am I going to do with the information? [0] https://i.imgur.com/3uyRWGJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3uyRWGJ.jpg

nitrogen 5y ago
What am I going to do with the information? The purpose of a functioning standup is contextualization. If you know your teammate is still working on feature X, maybe you notice that your own work is related and you can design some shared data structure that speeds up both of you. If you want to be an IC with no responsibility, that's fine, just make it clear to your team that your assigned work is all you are going to do. If you want to be more productive individually and as a team, though, the interconnectedness of the team is just as important as what any one member is working on.
- Salgat 5y ago
  Isn't this a very basic function of a kanban board?
- randomdata 5y ago
  If I know when the teammate starts working on X and stops working on X, why am I not able to infer that he is working on X during the period in between? In reality, I already know that he is working on X and anything that is relevant to that already applies. I'm still not clear on what information ”worked on feature X yesterday. Will continue to work on feature X today” gives me.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Tone of voice, body language, hesitation, etc. Non-verbal clues that maybe you can help your teammember, or that they can help you. It gets better if there's some detail about the task, like "Still working on X, runtime is too slow but I found a paper linked from Wikipedia with a promising algorithm." Lots of inferred and implied knowledge transfer can happen through intetactions that seem simple on the surface. E.g. in my example here, ideas of how to approach research for a task, what kinds of obstacles are normal, etc. If you're not building camaraderie, then maybe your standup isn't set up right or at the right time, but that doesn't mean the concept or the information is useless. And as a last resort, if you can't change something, then put in your own effort to make the best of it instead of just wasting the time entirely.
    - randomdata 5y ago
      > if you can't change something Oh, but I can change something. If you remember having this discussion last year, it was ”worked on feature X yesterday. Will continue to work on feature X today. No blockers.” To which I pointed out that the "No blockers" part serves no purpose as if anyone had a known blocker, they would have already let the team know when it became a blocker, not wait for a fixed time of day. It is not coincidence that the last part isn't said today. Today, I am here to share that the rest of the canned response is also useless. Build camaraderie. Actually talk about the work you are doing with your teammates. These things can be beneficial and you'll still get the same non-verbal cues if there is something afoot. Don't waste valuable time on nothingness.
      - geodel 5y ago
        Agree with sheer banality and vapidity of typical standups. Sometimes I feel organized religions have got nothing on Agile cult.
      - Buttons840 5y ago
        I consider "no blockers" to simply be a nicer way of saying "I'm done talking now". Developers aren't always the most socially gracefully, but hopefully we can continue to avoid saying "I'm done talking now".
        randomdata 5y ago
        "No blockers" as a funny sign-off phrase akin to "Bye", sure. But I've seen teams explicitly ask "Do you have any blockers?" 1. If I did, I would have told you a long time ago when it became a blocker. 2. If I somehow forgot to tell you a long time ago, I would have told you when I did my standup comedy^H^H^H^H^H^H routine. 3. If I still somehow forgot after all that, it doesn't matter.
ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
You lose two hours of productivity if someone interrupts you with random information? I also have trouble getting back into the flow of where I was, but I think 30 minutes would be my max lost productivity.
- randomdata 5y ago
  One hour to build up the universe, only to have it shattered. One more hour to get you back to where you were. I feel your assessment of 30 minutes to build the universe in the purest sense is fair, but I'm not sure it accounts for the additional friction involved. You might be the exception, but humans in general are known to avoid building up the universe, so to speak, if they anticipate an interruption. It takes even more time for the mind to accept that the time is right. And so, all told, I think two hours is quite reasonable.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  There has been research in this area. It's shocking (in both the literal and figurative sense) how much time is wasted by interruptions for people who do "thought work" like software development. If you have a daily standup around 10am, like the last place I had them, it's possible that you have instantly reduced the effective productivity of your entire team by 20% or even more. Of course that is in addition to all the other costs that come with standups. For example any fixed daily meeting kills the possibility of flexible working hours. That is one of the top perks for many developers and some developers are also much more productive working at non-traditional times. The standup meeting can also feel like an inquisition, particularly for juniors or new starters. It doesn't even have to be the classic manager-holding-court effect, just whoever is leading the meeting having a bad day and speaking in the wrong tone. Again, there goes your productivity for that person for possibly the entire rest of the day. If anyone reading this does use daily standups and everyone on their team wants to then that's great. Every team is different and doing what works for your team is what matters. But personally I have found that while sometimes useful points do arise during standups the benefits are greatly exaggerated. Valuable insights and awesome collaborations do not happen anything like often enough to justify all the downsides of the meetings, not least because IME the same information would probably have been passed on some other way and often faster in any moderately functional development team anyway.
8note 5y ago
Standup has a known time that you can plan around, and makes a spot to put all those short bits of info in one time, so you can avoid being interrupted and context switching when it's not standup
sdevonoes 5y ago
Usually standup meetings are scheduled at a given time in the day (usually, it's the very first thing in the morning). You know when it's coming; it's not like people randomly poking at you and making you do a context switch.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  I moved my team's standup to just before most people take there lunch. Initially it was an accomodation for someone who was temporarily working in a different time zone but after they returned home no one on the team wanted to change it. I like it for two reasons, I go for lunch straight after so don't have two context switches. And it sometimes works as an effective midday target for me to try to get a ticket progressed before the standup.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    In practice, lunch does not bring a context switch as you just don't go to lunch until you reach a natural stopping point. Standups cause a context switch because they are scheduled by the clock, not by the work. Asynchronous standups avoid that problem, but I've never seen an async standup bring any engagement and ends up being nothing more than "I'm working on X again. Duh." which is completely pointless.
    - VBprogrammer 5y ago
      Maybe for you, lots of us go for lunch with colleagues, play sports or boardgames and so that tends to happen on a schedule. At least we did until we all started working from home.
      - randomdata 5y ago
        Like another commenter said, you can always say "Hey guys, give me 15 minutes while I wrap this up" and you don't enter context switch mode. Unless you work with completely unreasonable people, they'll wait. In fairness, as you are forcing a context switch for a standup, it is likely that you do work with unreasonable people.
Nimitz14 5y ago
> Five seconds to say and two hours of lost productivity from the context switch required to hear it What a gem. Whenever the next "silicon valley" is made I'm waiting for a character to say this. Simply hilarious. Get off your high horse. You can afford an interruption or two per day.
- skydhash 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s the interruption. I work from home and I got interrupted all day, from family asking me something to teammate asking for my help and sometime joining a call. It’s the context switch that is bad. You can hold off most interruption to try to complete your current train of thought (like give me 15 minutes to complete this and I’ll get back to you). But when you have something that is mandatory, you avoid going into any deep work like a debugging session or architecting a new feature. And most of the time the standup does not really help, because productive teammates will reach out to each other during the day anyway if something impact them. And manager should reach out to developer anytime something pop up that impacts their work, not just wait for next day to let people know. Standup can be great if the responsibility across the team are spread out, but only at a lower frequency (once a week?).
bigbillheck 5y ago
If it takes you two hours to get back on track I think that whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.

nitrogen 5y ago

What am I going to do with the information? The purpose of a functioning standup is contextualization. If you know your teammate is still working on feature X, maybe you notice that your own work is related and you can design some shared data structure that speeds up both of you. If you want to be an IC with no responsibility, that's fine, just make it clear to your team that your assigned work is all you are going to do. If you want to be more productive individually and as a team, though, the interconnectedness of the team is just as important as what any one member is working on.

Salgat 5y ago
Isn't this a very basic function of a kanban board?
randomdata 5y ago
If I know when the teammate starts working on X and stops working on X, why am I not able to infer that he is working on X during the period in between? In reality, I already know that he is working on X and anything that is relevant to that already applies. I'm still not clear on what information ”worked on feature X yesterday. Will continue to work on feature X today” gives me.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Tone of voice, body language, hesitation, etc. Non-verbal clues that maybe you can help your teammember, or that they can help you. It gets better if there's some detail about the task, like "Still working on X, runtime is too slow but I found a paper linked from Wikipedia with a promising algorithm." Lots of inferred and implied knowledge transfer can happen through intetactions that seem simple on the surface. E.g. in my example here, ideas of how to approach research for a task, what kinds of obstacles are normal, etc. If you're not building camaraderie, then maybe your standup isn't set up right or at the right time, but that doesn't mean the concept or the information is useless. And as a last resort, if you can't change something, then put in your own effort to make the best of it instead of just wasting the time entirely.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    > if you can't change something Oh, but I can change something. If you remember having this discussion last year, it was ”worked on feature X yesterday. Will continue to work on feature X today. No blockers.” To which I pointed out that the "No blockers" part serves no purpose as if anyone had a known blocker, they would have already let the team know when it became a blocker, not wait for a fixed time of day. It is not coincidence that the last part isn't said today. Today, I am here to share that the rest of the canned response is also useless. Build camaraderie. Actually talk about the work you are doing with your teammates. These things can be beneficial and you'll still get the same non-verbal cues if there is something afoot. Don't waste valuable time on nothingness.
    - geodel 5y ago
      Agree with sheer banality and vapidity of typical standups. Sometimes I feel organized religions have got nothing on Agile cult.
    - Buttons840 5y ago
      I consider "no blockers" to simply be a nicer way of saying "I'm done talking now". Developers aren't always the most socially gracefully, but hopefully we can continue to avoid saying "I'm done talking now".
      - randomdata 5y ago
        "No blockers" as a funny sign-off phrase akin to "Bye", sure. But I've seen teams explicitly ask "Do you have any blockers?" 1. If I did, I would have told you a long time ago when it became a blocker. 2. If I somehow forgot to tell you a long time ago, I would have told you when I did my standup comedy^H^H^H^H^H^H routine. 3. If I still somehow forgot after all that, it doesn't matter.

ghostbrainalpha 5y ago

You lose two hours of productivity if someone interrupts you with random information? I also have trouble getting back into the flow of where I was, but I think 30 minutes would be my max lost productivity.

randomdata 5y ago
One hour to build up the universe, only to have it shattered. One more hour to get you back to where you were. I feel your assessment of 30 minutes to build the universe in the purest sense is fair, but I'm not sure it accounts for the additional friction involved. You might be the exception, but humans in general are known to avoid building up the universe, so to speak, if they anticipate an interruption. It takes even more time for the mind to accept that the time is right. And so, all told, I think two hours is quite reasonable.
Silhouette 5y ago
There has been research in this area. It's shocking (in both the literal and figurative sense) how much time is wasted by interruptions for people who do "thought work" like software development. If you have a daily standup around 10am, like the last place I had them, it's possible that you have instantly reduced the effective productivity of your entire team by 20% or even more. Of course that is in addition to all the other costs that come with standups. For example any fixed daily meeting kills the possibility of flexible working hours. That is one of the top perks for many developers and some developers are also much more productive working at non-traditional times. The standup meeting can also feel like an inquisition, particularly for juniors or new starters. It doesn't even have to be the classic manager-holding-court effect, just whoever is leading the meeting having a bad day and speaking in the wrong tone. Again, there goes your productivity for that person for possibly the entire rest of the day. If anyone reading this does use daily standups and everyone on their team wants to then that's great. Every team is different and doing what works for your team is what matters. But personally I have found that while sometimes useful points do arise during standups the benefits are greatly exaggerated. Valuable insights and awesome collaborations do not happen anything like often enough to justify all the downsides of the meetings, not least because IME the same information would probably have been passed on some other way and often faster in any moderately functional development team anyway.

8note 5y ago

Standup has a known time that you can plan around, and makes a spot to put all those short bits of info in one time, so you can avoid being interrupted and context switching when it's not standup

sdevonoes 5y ago

Usually standup meetings are scheduled at a given time in the day (usually, it's the very first thing in the morning). You know when it's coming; it's not like people randomly poking at you and making you do a context switch.

VBprogrammer 5y ago
I moved my team's standup to just before most people take there lunch. Initially it was an accomodation for someone who was temporarily working in a different time zone but after they returned home no one on the team wanted to change it. I like it for two reasons, I go for lunch straight after so don't have two context switches. And it sometimes works as an effective midday target for me to try to get a ticket progressed before the standup.
- randomdata 5y ago
  In practice, lunch does not bring a context switch as you just don't go to lunch until you reach a natural stopping point. Standups cause a context switch because they are scheduled by the clock, not by the work. Asynchronous standups avoid that problem, but I've never seen an async standup bring any engagement and ends up being nothing more than "I'm working on X again. Duh." which is completely pointless.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    Maybe for you, lots of us go for lunch with colleagues, play sports or boardgames and so that tends to happen on a schedule. At least we did until we all started working from home.
    - randomdata 5y ago
      Like another commenter said, you can always say "Hey guys, give me 15 minutes while I wrap this up" and you don't enter context switch mode. Unless you work with completely unreasonable people, they'll wait. In fairness, as you are forcing a context switch for a standup, it is likely that you do work with unreasonable people.

Nimitz14 5y ago

> Five seconds to say and two hours of lost productivity from the context switch required to hear it What a gem. Whenever the next "silicon valley" is made I'm waiting for a character to say this. Simply hilarious. Get off your high horse. You can afford an interruption or two per day.

skydhash 5y ago
I don’t think it’s the interruption. I work from home and I got interrupted all day, from family asking me something to teammate asking for my help and sometime joining a call. It’s the context switch that is bad. You can hold off most interruption to try to complete your current train of thought (like give me 15 minutes to complete this and I’ll get back to you). But when you have something that is mandatory, you avoid going into any deep work like a debugging session or architecting a new feature. And most of the time the standup does not really help, because productive teammates will reach out to each other during the day anyway if something impact them. And manager should reach out to developer anytime something pop up that impacts their work, not just wait for next day to let people know. Standup can be great if the responsibility across the team are spread out, but only at a lower frequency (once a week?).

bigbillheck 5y ago

If it takes you two hours to get back on track I think that whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.