5 ms·

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.

by Aeolun 2y ago

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.
- jghn 2y ago
  It Depends. I said in another post that I hated all the ceremonies, including standup. And it goes without saying that means long standups. But, one team I was one, we had long ass standup and it was perfect. It was very dev-driven, we were facing hard problems, and that was our time of the day to really nerd out. The PM would get bored after about 15-20 minutes and then we'd be working out how to deal with the issues that faced us. Sure, it could have happened at any point of the day, but that was our designated time where we were all in the office (this was pre-pandemic)
  - rerdavies 2y ago
    That seems unproductive. You end up having a room full of people discussing problems that should be solved by one or two people outside of the standup. That's contrary to what a stand up meeting should be. Don't do that.
- relaxing 2y ago
  Why is the PM still employed? Hasn’t the team all quit?
  - geodel 2y ago
    Because in real world people play with the hand they are dealt with. Team hasn't quit because there are no better jobs with empowered developers are waiting.
  - 2y ago
lpapez 2y ago
> It may be explicitly stated, but I’ve never had a scrum meeting without all managers and project managers. This, this, this and a thousand times this. It's always the same with Scrum. Every time you point out something clearly wrong, the response is always "well that's not really scrum, you're doing it wrong". It's like when discussing communism with some diehard fans - when you point out the flaws, the response is always "well that wasn't real communism that's why it failed". Well to both of those camps I say: if most attempts ended up implementing it "incorrectly" in the end, it's not a very useful framework to begin with then, is it?
- roenxi 2y ago
  That similarity is superficial. It is observing that no ideology perfectly survives implementation - which is true, but there is no alternative option so it isn't a useful observation. We don't have any successful countries that use communist ideologies because central planning is destructive and the abolishment of private property is catastrophic. Calling for communism is tantamount to wishing for death and destruction. The path to success through communism is something like China where they eventually learned to do the opposite of communism and got great results. We do have lots of successful companies using Scrum. They hire Scrum masters. They see Scrum as adding value. The scrum ideal is generally a bit of a compass towards higher value add. So scrum as an ideology seems to be net-successful even if implemented wrong.
  - carlmr 2y ago
    >So scrum as an ideology seems to be net-successful even if implemented wrong. How do you get to this conclusion? I haven't seen any implementation of scrum that didn't slow down development speed, due to unnecessary meetings and micromanagement. This might be that I've only seen 8 or so "implementations". If there's any evidence that scrum is a key net positive I'd like to see it at this point. Kanban IME can work well if the manager understood the core principle: Limit amount of concurrent work, use daily standup to prioritize work and unblock people hitting the multitasking limit. Sadly this concept which is the core tenet of Kanban and can be explained in one sentence was still too much to grasp for some managers, but I've at least seen most Kanban implementations be either a net positive, or neutral. I might be biased by my own experience, but I still need to see a Scrum implementation that doesn't grind productivity to a halt.
quartesixte 2y ago
As someone who works in a hard-tech startup, where daily standups in production manufacturing teams are part of the daily culture. 1) Anything longer than 15 minutes is insane 2) What do you even talk about for an hour? 3) Why do you even do standups for design work? What "blockers" could you possibly have that require daily, 15 minute tagups with the entire crew?
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  On #2, nothing. People stay an hour trying to look busy because somebody on the meeting expect them to be busy and the meeting to be important. So they spend an hour talking about nothing. On #3, blockers exist more on design than on operation. But the idea of a daily meeting to solve blockers is crazy-stupid. Imagine if operations did this, every time somebody's work get a wrong input, you'd stop their line until the next morning. That's why operations dailies aren't about blockers, and instead about information sharing. But design work doesn't have separate teams that need to share information, so they invent a bullshit reason to still have the meeting.
- kgeist 2y ago
  >What do you even talk about for an hour? We once had 1 hour long standups. The reasons were: 1) large team 2) many devs loved to go into detail about their work, and no one stopped them 3) the expectation was that a standup must be about describing what you did yesterday, in detail What we did: 1) split the team into subteams where each team has their own standup (down to 5-15 min) 2) the standup's facilitator now stops devs from going into too much detail, "you guys can discuss it further after the standup" 3) now the expectation is that a standup should be about checking the project status and if there are any blockers, and that's it, you don't have to recount your whole yesterday in great detail
  - RHSeeger 2y ago
    > 2) the standup's facilitator now stops devs from going into too much detail, "you guys can discuss it further after the standup" I said this in another comment, but a standup I'm part of tables these until the end of the call; and then anyone not involved in that conversation can drop off. It seems like a reasonable compromise to balance the need to get people together to discuss something against the need to not keep people tied up. It helps mitigate the issue of people not wanting to plan a meeting to just "talk about" something (when that's actually what is needed).
kgeist 2y ago
Our PM quit a month ago and now we have stand-ups without any managers. I think it made the developers more responsible and involved: every stand-up a new dev gets the role of a facilitator. Previously, it was a one-man show. The stand-ups have become slightly shorter, too. 2 years ago we had 1 hour long dailies because the team was too large. We split into 3 subteams, each has their own stand-up. Now it's down to 15 minutes max.

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.

by 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.

jghn 2y ago
It Depends. I said in another post that I hated all the ceremonies, including standup. And it goes without saying that means long standups. But, one team I was one, we had long ass standup and it was perfect. It was very dev-driven, we were facing hard problems, and that was our time of the day to really nerd out. The PM would get bored after about 15-20 minutes and then we'd be working out how to deal with the issues that faced us. Sure, it could have happened at any point of the day, but that was our designated time where we were all in the office (this was pre-pandemic)
- rerdavies 2y ago
  That seems unproductive. You end up having a room full of people discussing problems that should be solved by one or two people outside of the standup. That's contrary to what a stand up meeting should be. Don't do that.
relaxing 2y ago
Why is the PM still employed? Hasn’t the team all quit?
- geodel 2y ago
  Because in real world people play with the hand they are dealt with. Team hasn't quit because there are no better jobs with empowered developers are waiting.
- 2y ago

lpapez 2y ago

> It may be explicitly stated, but I’ve never had a scrum meeting without all managers and project managers. This, this, this and a thousand times this. It's always the same with Scrum. Every time you point out something clearly wrong, the response is always "well that's not really scrum, you're doing it wrong". It's like when discussing communism with some diehard fans - when you point out the flaws, the response is always "well that wasn't real communism that's why it failed". Well to both of those camps I say: if most attempts ended up implementing it "incorrectly" in the end, it's not a very useful framework to begin with then, is it?

roenxi 2y ago
That similarity is superficial. It is observing that no ideology perfectly survives implementation - which is true, but there is no alternative option so it isn't a useful observation. We don't have any successful countries that use communist ideologies because central planning is destructive and the abolishment of private property is catastrophic. Calling for communism is tantamount to wishing for death and destruction. The path to success through communism is something like China where they eventually learned to do the opposite of communism and got great results. We do have lots of successful companies using Scrum. They hire Scrum masters. They see Scrum as adding value. The scrum ideal is generally a bit of a compass towards higher value add. So scrum as an ideology seems to be net-successful even if implemented wrong.
- carlmr 2y ago
  >So scrum as an ideology seems to be net-successful even if implemented wrong. How do you get to this conclusion? I haven't seen any implementation of scrum that didn't slow down development speed, due to unnecessary meetings and micromanagement. This might be that I've only seen 8 or so "implementations". If there's any evidence that scrum is a key net positive I'd like to see it at this point. Kanban IME can work well if the manager understood the core principle: Limit amount of concurrent work, use daily standup to prioritize work and unblock people hitting the multitasking limit. Sadly this concept which is the core tenet of Kanban and can be explained in one sentence was still too much to grasp for some managers, but I've at least seen most Kanban implementations be either a net positive, or neutral. I might be biased by my own experience, but I still need to see a Scrum implementation that doesn't grind productivity to a halt.

quartesixte 2y ago

As someone who works in a hard-tech startup, where daily standups in production manufacturing teams are part of the daily culture. 1) Anything longer than 15 minutes is insane 2) What do you even talk about for an hour? 3) Why do you even do standups for design work? What "blockers" could you possibly have that require daily, 15 minute tagups with the entire crew?

marcosdumay 2y ago
On #2, nothing. People stay an hour trying to look busy because somebody on the meeting expect them to be busy and the meeting to be important. So they spend an hour talking about nothing. On #3, blockers exist more on design than on operation. But the idea of a daily meeting to solve blockers is crazy-stupid. Imagine if operations did this, every time somebody's work get a wrong input, you'd stop their line until the next morning. That's why operations dailies aren't about blockers, and instead about information sharing. But design work doesn't have separate teams that need to share information, so they invent a bullshit reason to still have the meeting.
kgeist 2y ago
>What do you even talk about for an hour? We once had 1 hour long standups. The reasons were: 1) large team 2) many devs loved to go into detail about their work, and no one stopped them 3) the expectation was that a standup must be about describing what you did yesterday, in detail What we did: 1) split the team into subteams where each team has their own standup (down to 5-15 min) 2) the standup's facilitator now stops devs from going into too much detail, "you guys can discuss it further after the standup" 3) now the expectation is that a standup should be about checking the project status and if there are any blockers, and that's it, you don't have to recount your whole yesterday in great detail
- RHSeeger 2y ago
  > 2) the standup's facilitator now stops devs from going into too much detail, "you guys can discuss it further after the standup" I said this in another comment, but a standup I'm part of tables these until the end of the call; and then anyone not involved in that conversation can drop off. It seems like a reasonable compromise to balance the need to get people together to discuss something against the need to not keep people tied up. It helps mitigate the issue of people not wanting to plan a meeting to just "talk about" something (when that's actually what is needed).

kgeist 2y ago

Our PM quit a month ago and now we have stand-ups without any managers. I think it made the developers more responsible and involved: every stand-up a new dev gets the role of a facilitator. Previously, it was a one-man show. The stand-ups have become slightly shorter, too. 2 years ago we had 1 hour long dailies because the team was too large. We split into 3 subteams, each has their own stand-up. Now it's down to 15 minutes max.