11 ms·

> Daily stand-ups, the main benefit of which is that managers (EMs/PMs) get daily updates on status. The scrum guide fairly explicitly states that managers sho

> Daily stand-ups, the main benefit of which is that managers (EMs/PMs) get daily updates on status. The scrum guide fairly explicitly states that managers should not attend or be part of stand-ups unless they're actively involved in the work as part of the development team.

erik_seaberg 2y ago
That's hard to imagine. In big tech it's the team manager who decides that standups should happen and when (maybe this is an expectation from higher-ups). He always joins unless running late.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Be that as it may, if the scrum guide explicitly says they shouldn't then it isn't really fair to blame scrum for that. Honestly, the recurring complaints with scrum, agile, etc basically boil down to this: shitty organizations can make any system miserable. People generally are blaming the intermediate cause (how we do scrum sucks) rather than the root cause (our company sucks and nothing would work).
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    We blame scrum because the framework provided makes it a lot easier for life to be miserable.
    - rerdavies 2y ago
      Compared to what? You haven't truly experienced process misery until you've done a 4 year death march in a waterfall process.
  - bboygravity 2y ago
    Oh, the good old "the user is doing it wrong, the product is fine" with scrum being the product. Can anybody (not PM/leader) give 1 example of a company where they saw scrum being done "correctly"? crickets I guess scrum is fine and people just don't know how to do it properly.
    - albedoa 2y ago
      Man, I agree with your specific criticism of the "No True Scotsman" refrain and with the larger criticisms of scrum, but this is an example of scrum prescribing X and companies doing !X, the literal opposite. How could scrum, the product, possibly be to blame for that even if it sucks? Or, at what point is it reasonable to blame the PM/leader for actively and knowingly practicing !$scrum while pretending it's $scrum?
      - randomdata 2y ago
        Companies try prescribing X, but as developers have no reason to care X doesn't happen without strict oversight by management, thus leading to !X to keep them in line. Is the gun with a 180º bend in the barrel, with a caution label that says "WARNING: Don't shoot yourself in the face", that sees everyone who tries using it shoot themselves in the face the user's fault, or could we say that the product is faulty? If a product relies on weasel words to try and pass its flaws off as being the user's fault, at what point is the product to blame? If one person uses it wrong, perhaps you can say that one person was doing something out of the ordinary, but when every person uses it wrong...?
    - rerdavies 2y ago
      Me. I've worked in a company where scrum was being done properly. It is wonderful.
- oneshtein 2y ago
  > In big tech it's the team manager who decides that standups should happen and when (maybe this is an expectation from higher-ups). Then it's not a SCRUM process at all. Case solved. https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#scrum-definition https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#scrum-definition https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#daily-scrum https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#daily-scrum
  - nottorp 2y ago
    > Then it's not a SCRUM process at all. Case solved. Yeah and communism also works in theory :)
    - randomdata 2y ago
      To be fair, it probably also works in practice, but by very definition post-scarcity is a necessary precondition. And that is still an ongoing effort that has never been realized. Granted, the UN has declared food to have achieved post-scarcity status so clear progress is being made, but we still have more work to do.
      - nottorp 2y ago
        > it probably also works in practice I've lived the first 14 years of my life under the Romanian communist dictatorship so no. Let's put it this way. If it's the property of the people it's not everyone's in practice, it's no one's. So you're free to slack, cheat and steal from your "property of the people", you're cheating "no one". > post-scarcity is a necessary precondition There is no post scarcity. The goalposts for scarcity just move up.
        randomdata 2y ago
        > I've lived the first 14 years of my life under the Romanian communist dictatorship so no. That doesn't make any sense. Communism's defining feature is that there is no longer a state. How can you recognize Romania, and especially a Romanian dictatorship, without there being a state? Perhaps you're confusing communism with rule by the Communist Party? - Communism is a work of science fiction that imagines what life is like in a post-scarcity world – indeed, science fiction that some people would like to see become reality. Star Trek is a more modern adaptation on the same basic idea, which you may be more familiar with. - The Communist Party is a political group that, at least on paper, is focused on achieving post-scarcity through capturing the means of production. It was once theorized in a certain Manifesto about Communism that post-scarcity would not be achievable through capitalism as the capitalists would set up barriers to seeing it through, and that the way to protect against that was the bring the means of production into social hands. Hence why the Communist Party is so-named. But that would be like saying that democracy doesn't work because you don't like what the political party known as the Democrats are doing in the USA. Or that workers don't work because you don't like what the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) did. > There is no post scarcity. The goalposts for scarcity just move up. Perhaps. But it remains that communism cannot exist without having achieved post-scarcity. How could it?
thayne 2y ago
In my experience, if the PM isn't part of it, the standup doesn't happen, because no one else cares that much. If someone gets stuck on something or needs help we just send a slack message, no need to wait for a fixed meeting.
Aeolun 2y ago
It may be explicitly stated, but I’ve never had a scrum meeting without all managers and project managers. They also tend to make the stand-ups one hour long.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  Surely you're exaggerating about a one hour standup?
  - bboygravity 2y ago
    The goal is always 15 minutes and the reality always (much) longer.
  - mid-kid 2y ago
    I've been at companies where this was indeed the case.
  - dathinab 2y ago
    I wich while it's not quite as bad for us 30min are the norm and it spilling to 40 min not rare and that is with us trying to cut it short but too many other things are conflicting with short dailies, mainly sure to company structure/size
  - throw-the-towel 2y ago
    Yeah, can't believe their standups are so short. (I wish I was joking.)
- oneshtein 2y ago
  You never had a SCRUM meeting.
- repox 2y ago
  > They also tend to make the stand-ups one hour long. I'm Head of Development in a midsized SaaS company. Another team's PM went for paternity leave and I stepped in to lean in on any needs. I discovered that the team of 10 people were using close to an hour a day on stand-up. A culture thing, apparently. I joined he stand-up a few times, slimmed the scope of the conversation to roughly 10-15 minutes. This worked for all three months of the PM's paternity leave. PM returns, is pissed over the change and in less than two days, the stand-up is back to almost an hour a day.
jboggan 2y ago
Real scrum has never been tried!
scotty79 2y ago
Right. So in one team I worked in, the team leader had to take notes during stand-ups of what everyone is doing to deliver them to managers so they can browse at their leisure.

erik_seaberg 2y ago

That's hard to imagine. In big tech it's the team manager who decides that standups should happen and when (maybe this is an expectation from higher-ups). He always joins unless running late.

bigstrat2003 2y ago
Be that as it may, if the scrum guide explicitly says they shouldn't then it isn't really fair to blame scrum for that. Honestly, the recurring complaints with scrum, agile, etc basically boil down to this: shitty organizations can make any system miserable. People generally are blaming the intermediate cause (how we do scrum sucks) rather than the root cause (our company sucks and nothing would work).
- Aeolun 2y ago
  We blame scrum because the framework provided makes it a lot easier for life to be miserable.
  - rerdavies 2y ago
    Compared to what? You haven't truly experienced process misery until you've done a 4 year death march in a waterfall process.
- bboygravity 2y ago
  Oh, the good old "the user is doing it wrong, the product is fine" with scrum being the product. Can anybody (not PM/leader) give 1 example of a company where they saw scrum being done "correctly"? crickets I guess scrum is fine and people just don't know how to do it properly.
  - albedoa 2y ago
    Man, I agree with your specific criticism of the "No True Scotsman" refrain and with the larger criticisms of scrum, but this is an example of scrum prescribing X and companies doing !X, the literal opposite. How could scrum, the product, possibly be to blame for that even if it sucks? Or, at what point is it reasonable to blame the PM/leader for actively and knowingly practicing !$scrum while pretending it's $scrum?
    - randomdata 2y ago
      Companies try prescribing X, but as developers have no reason to care X doesn't happen without strict oversight by management, thus leading to !X to keep them in line. Is the gun with a 180º bend in the barrel, with a caution label that says "WARNING: Don't shoot yourself in the face", that sees everyone who tries using it shoot themselves in the face the user's fault, or could we say that the product is faulty? If a product relies on weasel words to try and pass its flaws off as being the user's fault, at what point is the product to blame? If one person uses it wrong, perhaps you can say that one person was doing something out of the ordinary, but when every person uses it wrong...?
  - rerdavies 2y ago
    Me. I've worked in a company where scrum was being done properly. It is wonderful.
oneshtein 2y ago
> In big tech it's the team manager who decides that standups should happen and when (maybe this is an expectation from higher-ups). Then it's not a SCRUM process at all. Case solved. https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#scrum-definition https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#scrum-definition https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#daily-scrum https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#daily-scrum
- nottorp 2y ago
  > Then it's not a SCRUM process at all. Case solved. Yeah and communism also works in theory :)
  - randomdata 2y ago
    To be fair, it probably also works in practice, but by very definition post-scarcity is a necessary precondition. And that is still an ongoing effort that has never been realized. Granted, the UN has declared food to have achieved post-scarcity status so clear progress is being made, but we still have more work to do.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      > it probably also works in practice I've lived the first 14 years of my life under the Romanian communist dictatorship so no. Let's put it this way. If it's the property of the people it's not everyone's in practice, it's no one's. So you're free to slack, cheat and steal from your "property of the people", you're cheating "no one". > post-scarcity is a necessary precondition There is no post scarcity. The goalposts for scarcity just move up.
      - randomdata 2y ago
        > I've lived the first 14 years of my life under the Romanian communist dictatorship so no. That doesn't make any sense. Communism's defining feature is that there is no longer a state. How can you recognize Romania, and especially a Romanian dictatorship, without there being a state? Perhaps you're confusing communism with rule by the Communist Party? - Communism is a work of science fiction that imagines what life is like in a post-scarcity world – indeed, science fiction that some people would like to see become reality. Star Trek is a more modern adaptation on the same basic idea, which you may be more familiar with. - The Communist Party is a political group that, at least on paper, is focused on achieving post-scarcity through capturing the means of production. It was once theorized in a certain Manifesto about Communism that post-scarcity would not be achievable through capitalism as the capitalists would set up barriers to seeing it through, and that the way to protect against that was the bring the means of production into social hands. Hence why the Communist Party is so-named. But that would be like saying that democracy doesn't work because you don't like what the political party known as the Democrats are doing in the USA. Or that workers don't work because you don't like what the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) did. > There is no post scarcity. The goalposts for scarcity just move up. Perhaps. But it remains that communism cannot exist without having achieved post-scarcity. How could it?

thayne 2y ago

In my experience, if the PM isn't part of it, the standup doesn't happen, because no one else cares that much. If someone gets stuck on something or needs help we just send a slack message, no need to wait for a fixed meeting.

Aeolun 2y ago

It may be explicitly stated, but I’ve never had a scrum meeting without all managers and project managers. They also tend to make the stand-ups one hour long.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
shepherdjerred 2y ago
Surely you're exaggerating about a one hour standup?
- bboygravity 2y ago
  The goal is always 15 minutes and the reality always (much) longer.
- mid-kid 2y ago
  I've been at companies where this was indeed the case.
- dathinab 2y ago
  I wich while it's not quite as bad for us 30min are the norm and it spilling to 40 min not rare and that is with us trying to cut it short but too many other things are conflicting with short dailies, mainly sure to company structure/size
- throw-the-towel 2y ago
  Yeah, can't believe their standups are so short. (I wish I was joking.)
oneshtein 2y ago
You never had a SCRUM meeting.
repox 2y ago
> They also tend to make the stand-ups one hour long. I'm Head of Development in a midsized SaaS company. Another team's PM went for paternity leave and I stepped in to lean in on any needs. I discovered that the team of 10 people were using close to an hour a day on stand-up. A culture thing, apparently. I joined he stand-up a few times, slimmed the scope of the conversation to roughly 10-15 minutes. This worked for all three months of the PM's paternity leave. PM returns, is pissed over the change and in less than two days, the stand-up is back to almost an hour a day.

jboggan 2y ago

Real scrum has never been tried!

scotty79 2y ago

Right. So in one team I worked in, the team leader had to take notes during stand-ups of what everyone is doing to deliver them to managers so they can browse at their leisure.