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The common thread I see in your complaints about stand-ups are the "I can't break my work into pieces, I need several hours of intense focus to work on anything

by pyre 14y ago

The common thread I see in your complaints about stand-ups are the "I can't break my work into pieces, I need several hours of intense focus to work on anything." E.g., Your stand-up is from 9-930a. After which you can't start anything substantial because 'lunch is coming,' but that's 2.5 hours away (assuming you lunch at noon).

jbellis 14y ago
That's pretty common. "Maker's schedule" http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html rings true to every technical person I know.
davidwoof1 14y ago
You're looking at the wrong side of the meeting. It's the time before the meeting, not the time after. I like morning stand-ups, but a big problem is that if the stand-up is at 9, I start winding down whatever I'm doing around 8:30, and I don't start new tasks after 8-8:30. Multiply the loss by the entire team every day and that's potentially a big loss of time. And because everyone's schedule is different, there's really no place to put the meeting that avoids the problem. The benefits of a well-run standup can outweight this productivity cost, but it's a real cost that needs to be considered.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Has anyone ever tried an end-of-the-day standup? Would not tend to disrupt flow, because you're going home afterwards. Also might help keep the gathering focused and on-topic. I guess this does presume that everyone wraps up at about the same time every day, which I've generally found to be the case, but may not work well with widely distributed workers or places where people actually practice a wider range of work hours.
  - tcharron 14y ago
    I have seem teams use end of day stand-ups. The problem with those is that they tend to devolve into status updates pretty quickly. Team members report on what they did that day, but seldom think about the things they are going to get done next and the things that are preventing them from getting started on the next thing, which in my opinion, are the more important things to focus on.
  - msrpotus 14y ago
    A team I interned with did standups at the end of the day but honestly, at that point, you just want to go home; you don't want to stay to hear what's going on with everyone else.
sultezdukes 14y ago
One thing we had for an action item of our retrospective is to start consolidating meetings. We had a huge problem with non-delivery people scheduling meetings willy-nilly, just because people's calendar's were free. I've put the kibosh on that, as much as possible, especially in the afternoon.

by pyre 14y ago

jbellis 14y ago

That's pretty common. "Maker's schedule" http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html rings true to every technical person I know.

davidwoof1 14y ago

You're looking at the wrong side of the meeting. It's the time before the meeting, not the time after. I like morning stand-ups, but a big problem is that if the stand-up is at 9, I start winding down whatever I'm doing around 8:30, and I don't start new tasks after 8-8:30. Multiply the loss by the entire team every day and that's potentially a big loss of time. And because everyone's schedule is different, there's really no place to put the meeting that avoids the problem. The benefits of a well-run standup can outweight this productivity cost, but it's a real cost that needs to be considered.

ams6110 14y ago
Has anyone ever tried an end-of-the-day standup? Would not tend to disrupt flow, because you're going home afterwards. Also might help keep the gathering focused and on-topic. I guess this does presume that everyone wraps up at about the same time every day, which I've generally found to be the case, but may not work well with widely distributed workers or places where people actually practice a wider range of work hours.
- tcharron 14y ago
  I have seem teams use end of day stand-ups. The problem with those is that they tend to devolve into status updates pretty quickly. Team members report on what they did that day, but seldom think about the things they are going to get done next and the things that are preventing them from getting started on the next thing, which in my opinion, are the more important things to focus on.
- msrpotus 14y ago
  A team I interned with did standups at the end of the day but honestly, at that point, you just want to go home; you don't want to stay to hear what's going on with everyone else.

sultezdukes 14y ago

One thing we had for an action item of our retrospective is to start consolidating meetings. We had a huge problem with non-delivery people scheduling meetings willy-nilly, just because people's calendar's were free. I've put the kibosh on that, as much as possible, especially in the afternoon.