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Most people have no idea what a productive standup looks like. I was on a team once where we had a standup on Monday mornings. Fucking beautiful meeting. Of cou

Most people have no idea what a productive standup looks like. I was on a team once where we had a standup on Monday mornings. Fucking beautiful meeting. Of course, a new dev manager killed it for some god forsaken reason. That meeting prevented so much bullshit. That manager ended up getting the boot because...chaos and lack of productivity. Now every where I go some douchebag paranoid manager has established daily stand-ups because it makes them feel better. I resent telling people I'm working on a story we all groomed together and brought into the Sprint....it's right on the board: In progress, In Review, Ready for acceptance, Done. Clear as day. I'm still working on X, gonna work on X some more...everything is going great. Not adult-like behavior.

Silhouette 5y ago
Most people have no idea what a productive standup looks like. Given how common standups seem to have become, that probably tells us something. Maybe the typical daily standup as widely advocated isn't usually productive and it's actually some variations used by some individual teams that have been more worthwhile for those specific teams?
- randomdata 5y ago
  My wife works in healthcare and has a daily standup. They use that time to go over what work will be done that day, which largely cannot be predicted far in advance as it is dependent on patient bookings. This brings novel information. Fundamentally, that is also the idea pushed in software. A chance to talk about what needs to be done that day. But, in my experience, tech companies also schedule planning meetings. That is where it is determined what will be done for the next while (two weeks seems to be a common cadence) and after that the course is set. There is nothing else to talk about, unless someone has a problem, and when someone has a problem (assuming your team is functional) they reach out when they have a problem, not wait until a prescribed time 23.75 hours later. That means there is no additional information to give in the standup, and thus this is likely the source of why standups end up being pointless the vast majority of the time in tech. The healthcare case, on the other hand, provides clear value. There are likely some cases where tech teams suffer from no direction, void of an idea of what needs to be done before the moment it needs to happen. I imagine that overlaps with tech that is dysfunctional. A productive standup does not exactly seem like something to strive for, but if all you have is a bandaid...

Silhouette 5y ago

Most people have no idea what a productive standup looks like. Given how common standups seem to have become, that probably tells us something. Maybe the typical daily standup as widely advocated isn't usually productive and it's actually some variations used by some individual teams that have been more worthwhile for those specific teams?

randomdata 5y ago
My wife works in healthcare and has a daily standup. They use that time to go over what work will be done that day, which largely cannot be predicted far in advance as it is dependent on patient bookings. This brings novel information. Fundamentally, that is also the idea pushed in software. A chance to talk about what needs to be done that day. But, in my experience, tech companies also schedule planning meetings. That is where it is determined what will be done for the next while (two weeks seems to be a common cadence) and after that the course is set. There is nothing else to talk about, unless someone has a problem, and when someone has a problem (assuming your team is functional) they reach out when they have a problem, not wait until a prescribed time 23.75 hours later. That means there is no additional information to give in the standup, and thus this is likely the source of why standups end up being pointless the vast majority of the time in tech. The healthcare case, on the other hand, provides clear value. There are likely some cases where tech teams suffer from no direction, void of an idea of what needs to be done before the moment it needs to happen. I imagine that overlaps with tech that is dysfunctional. A productive standup does not exactly seem like something to strive for, but if all you have is a bandaid...