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We have JIRA etc for tracking work. That should always be the single source of truth; verbal communication isn't useful in the long run (someone might have miss

We have JIRA etc for tracking work. That should always be the single source of truth; verbal communication isn't useful in the long run (someone might have missed standup, people forget, etc). Even so, I've had daily stand-ups at the last several companies for years now. It is a consistently pointless exercise. To make it worse, several companies have also required posting our daily statuses in slack channels, just so the managers who were too busy to attend standup can see what people were going to say in standup, even though the exact same information is already in JIRA. The signal-to-noise ratio is way, way off.

vidarh 4y ago
"Should be" being the operative term. I've yet to work anywhere where tickets consistently up to date, and often ceremony like standup is where we find out that something was left out. If you consistently manage to do so across your team without it, then, hey, that's amazing.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  What's stopping PMs to remind people on slack to update their tickets? In my previous job we had a task blocked in our calendar every Tuesday 10AM to 12 PM just for updating Jira and Gitlab tickets. Having people gather in circles physically or jumping on calls every single day just for this bullshit that can be done async is absolutely insane.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    There are plenty of things you can try, some of which might even work better for some teams, and worse for others. The point is not that you can't do without a standup, but that whether or not you individually perceive the standup as a benefit isn't necessarily relevant. The relevant question is really whether or not the standup is the least disruptive tool to ensure your team keeps everything up to date. As I said in my original comment: The more disciplined a team is, the less you need that ceremony.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      To answer your question, no, the daily stand-up is not the least disruptive tool. There's much better alternatives that can be tried and tailored to each team but nobody does because the stand-up is so entrenched in the industry nobody bothers.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        I've tried many, over 25+ years of managing teams, and for some teams there are better alternatives, for some the stand-up works best. I absolutely agree with trying and tailoring options, and I have and I have ended up both with and without daily standups as a direct consequence of testing what works for a given team.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  The thing is, the daily standup is the reason why your board isn't up to date. People don't bother being strict about it because every single day they can just mention that they need to update it yet and it's okay because that's why we have standup- so only the select people who attend get the real status of things.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    On if you treat it as ok for the board not to be up to date on the call.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      That just goes back to my original point. If the tickets are up to date on the call, there's no reason to have a daily standup. If someone isn't keeping their tickets up to date, you don't need to hold an entire team hostage in a meeting just to remind them.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        And my point there is that sometimes it turns out that knowing it will be discussed at a call is the most effective way of getting people to actually do things. It depends very much on how disciplined your team members are. It turns out - from experience - that a whole lot of "sorry, I'm too busy now, will do it shortly" disappears when there's a clear, known deadline and you need to give an update in front of a group. You can surely find other ways. You can chew out people who don't heed the reminders, or bring it up in performance reviews, and do all kinds of things. Or you can just have people take five minutes, and at the same time occasionally it tends to throw up other things that are useful too. Which approach will work best depends very much on the team. W The point is that the reasons for ceremony is often not the ceremony itself, but how it alters behaviour. At the same time, of course there are also managers who engage in cargo cult management, for whom the point of the ceremony is the ceremony, so I'm not saying there aren't plenty of pointless standups being carried out.

vidarh 4y ago

"Should be" being the operative term. I've yet to work anywhere where tickets consistently up to date, and often ceremony like standup is where we find out that something was left out. If you consistently manage to do so across your team without it, then, hey, that's amazing.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
What's stopping PMs to remind people on slack to update their tickets? In my previous job we had a task blocked in our calendar every Tuesday 10AM to 12 PM just for updating Jira and Gitlab tickets. Having people gather in circles physically or jumping on calls every single day just for this bullshit that can be done async is absolutely insane.
- vidarh 4y ago
  There are plenty of things you can try, some of which might even work better for some teams, and worse for others. The point is not that you can't do without a standup, but that whether or not you individually perceive the standup as a benefit isn't necessarily relevant. The relevant question is really whether or not the standup is the least disruptive tool to ensure your team keeps everything up to date. As I said in my original comment: The more disciplined a team is, the less you need that ceremony.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    To answer your question, no, the daily stand-up is not the least disruptive tool. There's much better alternatives that can be tried and tailored to each team but nobody does because the stand-up is so entrenched in the industry nobody bothers.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      I've tried many, over 25+ years of managing teams, and for some teams there are better alternatives, for some the stand-up works best. I absolutely agree with trying and tailoring options, and I have and I have ended up both with and without daily standups as a direct consequence of testing what works for a given team.
zdragnar 4y ago
The thing is, the daily standup is the reason why your board isn't up to date. People don't bother being strict about it because every single day they can just mention that they need to update it yet and it's okay because that's why we have standup- so only the select people who attend get the real status of things.
- vidarh 4y ago
  On if you treat it as ok for the board not to be up to date on the call.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    That just goes back to my original point. If the tickets are up to date on the call, there's no reason to have a daily standup. If someone isn't keeping their tickets up to date, you don't need to hold an entire team hostage in a meeting just to remind them.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      And my point there is that sometimes it turns out that knowing it will be discussed at a call is the most effective way of getting people to actually do things. It depends very much on how disciplined your team members are. It turns out - from experience - that a whole lot of "sorry, I'm too busy now, will do it shortly" disappears when there's a clear, known deadline and you need to give an update in front of a group. You can surely find other ways. You can chew out people who don't heed the reminders, or bring it up in performance reviews, and do all kinds of things. Or you can just have people take five minutes, and at the same time occasionally it tends to throw up other things that are useful too. Which approach will work best depends very much on the team. W The point is that the reasons for ceremony is often not the ceremony itself, but how it alters behaviour. At the same time, of course there are also managers who engage in cargo cult management, for whom the point of the ceremony is the ceremony, so I'm not saying there aren't plenty of pointless standups being carried out.