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I have done that a few times and I feel the value drops to almost zero, or in some instances even negative, by doing this. Standups should be short hence do th

I have done that a few times and I feel the value drops to almost zero, or in some instances even negative, by doing this. Standups should be short hence do them standing with no digital screens around and team-size is optimally ~5. 30-60 secs per person probably. Writing a line on Slack spreads them out and takes away more focus IMHO. Many people will just ignore what is written in the Slack channel and you lose the advantage that everyone knows what is going on and can give feedback. Instant helping out or course correct does not happen. You lose the team feeling a sense of the team making progress, it easily becomes each dev for themselves. It often devolves into ticking a box and keeping up the appearance that you are on track, instead of quickly catching those potential situations. I have seen devs then get into terrible psychological pressure since they have over-reported in a way that is much harder in a real standup. If you need to focus more I would prefer to just drop the daily standup completely once or twice a week.

bdcravens 5y ago
Worked on a contract where we did async standups, and implemented that in our small company for a bit. Stakeholder (owner/president) really liked it. I haven't worked at a company that did physical standups, but what I've heard over and over is that they tend to devolve into longer meetings, and even worse, into blame game sessions.
quantified 5y ago
Concur. You miss all context-sharing and exchange of q&a. And the team-ness plummets.
theonething 5y ago
> 30-60 secs per person probably In my experience with a handful of teams so far, this has never consistently happened. There are always a few people (if not most of the team) that seem to not be able to be succinct. And many times, the standup turns into a back and forth between 2 or 3 members on a topic that's unrelated to what the rest of the members are doing and therefore a waste of their time. And most of the time, it's just mind numbingly mechanical and boring, something to get over with so I can get on with my work. I feel like a team meeting at the beginning of the week to sync up and then ad hoc meetings during the week between relevant parties would be better. Maybe I've just had bad luck with stand ups or maybe it's me. Not sure.
- quantified 5y ago
  Someone needs to say “parking lot” and move on. A bit of agenda control helps the team. You can always multitask when you’re on Zoom.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  Someone needs to say something to those people so they know to speed it up and table discussions. Ideally peers would say it, not a manager, as it’s the devs’ meeting. If you keep noticing this wherever you go, you should be the one to say it.

bdcravens 5y ago

Worked on a contract where we did async standups, and implemented that in our small company for a bit. Stakeholder (owner/president) really liked it. I haven't worked at a company that did physical standups, but what I've heard over and over is that they tend to devolve into longer meetings, and even worse, into blame game sessions.

quantified 5y ago

Concur. You miss all context-sharing and exchange of q&a. And the team-ness plummets.

theonething 5y ago

> 30-60 secs per person probably In my experience with a handful of teams so far, this has never consistently happened. There are always a few people (if not most of the team) that seem to not be able to be succinct. And many times, the standup turns into a back and forth between 2 or 3 members on a topic that's unrelated to what the rest of the members are doing and therefore a waste of their time. And most of the time, it's just mind numbingly mechanical and boring, something to get over with so I can get on with my work. I feel like a team meeting at the beginning of the week to sync up and then ad hoc meetings during the week between relevant parties would be better. Maybe I've just had bad luck with stand ups or maybe it's me. Not sure.

quantified 5y ago
Someone needs to say “parking lot” and move on. A bit of agenda control helps the team. You can always multitask when you’re on Zoom.
1123581321 5y ago
Someone needs to say something to those people so they know to speed it up and table discussions. Ideally peers would say it, not a manager, as it’s the devs’ meeting. If you keep noticing this wherever you go, you should be the one to say it.