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In my experience, daily stand-up meetings work best when: -The team is new, or starting on a new project. -The product is approaching a big deadline. With th

by Smudge 14y ago

In my experience, daily stand-up meetings work best when: -The team is new, or starting on a new project. -The product is approaching a big deadline. With the former, it helps the team build momentum early-on if there is a chance to sync-up and trade knowledge every day. With the latter, it pays to do a daily triage of new issues and re-evaluate existing priorities, so that there are no last-minute surprises. Generally, when the team is working in full swing, daily meetings become less productive. One way of mitigating this is to just be aware of this fact and keep the meetings as short as possible. Stand-up is not the time to evaluate each member's performance, so nobody should feel pressured to explain everything they are working on in detail. A general overview should suffice (one or two bullet points), with clarifications should anyone need to know more.

kzahel 14y ago
I've also seen these meetings used as a way for people to "prove" that they have been working. The main problem I have with mandatory meetings is that they often impair one's ability to get work done. Some people work best when uninterrupted by a meeting. Some people work best when they get an entire morning without interruption. These meetings seem to be mostly sitting waiting for the last person to arrive, or for the cat wrangler to get started with proceedings.
- tcharron 14y ago
  Remember, it's more important to build the right thing than it is to build lots of stuff. It's better to have the daily stand-up, interrupt your productivity a little bit and discover what you're working on shouldn't be worked on at all, than it is to work for days on something only to have to throw it out and start all over again because you didn't know that something changed. Far too many organizations focus too much on individual productivity and far too little on delivering things that are actually valuable to their customers. That's not to say individuals shouldn't be productive, just that writing code all the time doesn't necessarily mean you will be successful as a business. If the start time is a problem, bring it up at your retrospective and see how the rest of the team feels about it.

by Smudge 14y ago

kzahel 14y ago

I've also seen these meetings used as a way for people to "prove" that they have been working. The main problem I have with mandatory meetings is that they often impair one's ability to get work done. Some people work best when uninterrupted by a meeting. Some people work best when they get an entire morning without interruption. These meetings seem to be mostly sitting waiting for the last person to arrive, or for the cat wrangler to get started with proceedings.

tcharron 14y ago
Remember, it's more important to build the right thing than it is to build lots of stuff. It's better to have the daily stand-up, interrupt your productivity a little bit and discover what you're working on shouldn't be worked on at all, than it is to work for days on something only to have to throw it out and start all over again because you didn't know that something changed. Far too many organizations focus too much on individual productivity and far too little on delivering things that are actually valuable to their customers. That's not to say individuals shouldn't be productive, just that writing code all the time doesn't necessarily mean you will be successful as a business. If the start time is a problem, bring it up at your retrospective and see how the rest of the team feels about it.