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I've had better success with face-to-face standups. In my experience, "progress should be obvious from the board" and async "standups" have been far less effect

I've had better success with face-to-face standups. In my experience, "progress should be obvious from the board" and async "standups" have been far less effective than actual standups. Lots of engineers are introverted and hate writing; a good product manager can extract context and blockers via voice (without making it feel like a pop quiz or a blame game) that a shy engineer might be hesitant to broadcast in writing in Slack, and other engineers/designers are _far_ more likely to hear the person when they're speaking than they are to read their boring Slack update (or, even more unlikely, read through that other person's tickets). My rule of thumb has been to keep standups to 7 minutes max, have the other 7 minutes after for any breakout that's needed, and schedule something else if there are still thorny issues to go through. If there are issues with standups bloating to 30 minutes (???), that feels like a process/weak-PM problem, not a tooling problem.

jacknews 4y ago
"manager can extract context and blockers via voice" lol. Which agile principle is this?
- joegahona 4y ago
  > The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  - jacknews 4y ago
    'convey', not 'extract'. It's a quite different stance. The PM does not 'run' this meeting. That's just a traditional project manager daily status meeting, the inverse of a 'scrum' where the team themselves huddle together and discuss their problems, and what they're going to do next, etc.
    - joegahona 4y ago
      If "extract" is too triggering, you can replace it with "glean." Probably a bad word choice on my part.
      - jacknews 4y ago
        maybe, but your original description does not seem to be in the spirit of agile, but more like a manager controlling a team.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- zacharycohn 4y ago
  Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
lnxg33k1 4y ago
>> Lots of engineers are introverted and hate writing I think it’s the time that introverts start going to a therapist to get it fixed, because they’re slowly getting to the top of my most hated bunch of people with this expectation that the whole world need to be put in a passive and painful misery to accommodate them

jacknews 4y ago

"manager can extract context and blockers via voice" lol. Which agile principle is this?

joegahona 4y ago
> The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
- jacknews 4y ago
  'convey', not 'extract'. It's a quite different stance. The PM does not 'run' this meeting. That's just a traditional project manager daily status meeting, the inverse of a 'scrum' where the team themselves huddle together and discuss their problems, and what they're going to do next, etc.
  - joegahona 4y ago
    If "extract" is too triggering, you can replace it with "glean." Probably a bad word choice on my part.
    - jacknews 4y ago
      maybe, but your original description does not seem to be in the spirit of agile, but more like a manager controlling a team.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
zacharycohn 4y ago
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

lnxg33k1 4y ago

>> Lots of engineers are introverted and hate writing I think it’s the time that introverts start going to a therapist to get it fixed, because they’re slowly getting to the top of my most hated bunch of people with this expectation that the whole world need to be put in a passive and painful misery to accommodate them