3 ms·

When the author states "The first question of the daily stand-up is pretty pointless: What did you do yesterday?", he misses the real value in the question, whi

by kogus 12y ago

When the author states "The first question of the daily stand-up is pretty pointless: What did you do yesterday?", he misses the real value in the question, which is to motivate me to do something today which I will be able to talk about tomorrow.

derekp7 12y ago
That seems to motivate you to do something that can be talked (bragged) about, not something that is actually useful/needed, that takes more than a day to work out fully.
Finster 12y ago
As a lead developer, if my developers are only motivated to do something each day because of being held accountable the next day, then I hired the wrong people. I want people to be self-starters. I shouldn't have to babysit and micromanage what they're doing each day. We use stand-ups as opportunities to discuss obstacles that people are encountering and discuss opportunities for pair programming. I use them as an option in my training toolkit. If we're working on fairly routine things (like setting up unit tests, database layers, etc.) then I don't bother with stand-ups at all unless I sense a need (like someone hitting a wall).
- claar 12y ago
  "Self-starter" is one of many good qualities for a developer. Here are some others off the top of my head: * Creative * Detail-oriented * Outside-the-box-thinker * Insightful * Meticulous .. and so on. I've found that with any such list, people will already excel in some, and still be growing in the others. Oftentimes these attributes are contrary to each other -- your most creative developer is probably not your most detail-oriented developer, for instance. If you restrict your hires to all excel in a single attribute, such as "self-starter", you may be missing out on some fantastic developers who excel in other things. In short, some of your developers may very well find daily accountability to be helpful, and this doesn't necessarily mean they aren't fantastic developers in other ways.
- Scarfleece 12y ago
  There are plenty of talented, productive people who aren't self-starters. Your company will be missing out on them. You can easily say they're the wrong people, but you could also say you're the wrong leader. Rant: Not everyone is an isolation-loving codemonkey. Some people need the feelings of team involvement, urgency and repercussions. If I'm just left to sit in the corner all day, and no one knows what I'm doing, and no one gives a shit if I do nothing... guess what? I'm going to end up doing nothing. Perhaps people like me are flawed, but we're still very talented and capable -- and not every company can afford to pass over the extroverted developers.
- blazespin 12y ago
  "I shouldn't have to babysit and micromanage what they're doing each day." Sorry, you call 15 minutes a day micromanaging? Anyways, I agree with some of the complaints. The tools can help out a lot. I disagree about the firefighting comment though. The whole point of scrum is not to firefight and leave that up to the scrum master so you don't lose focus.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- fsloth 12y ago
  " I shouldn't have to babysit and micromanage what they're doing each day." But the standup is not about you micromanaging. The standup is about the team. It's not about having an accountability red-flag to force people into labour, it's about creating a benign cultural incentive to work. Some people actually like discussing what they've done. And if someone is having a slight episode of procrastination then knowing one needs to tell the next day gives an extra motivation to sharpen up. It's not about putting collars and leashes on people. It's about giving visibility to work. Often visibility without explicit punishments nor rewards is sufficient to give an extra boost to efforts. It's an automatic reminder to people on what is important, without being irritating or nagging.
- mehwoot 12y ago
  As a lead developer, if my developers are only motivated to do something each day because of being held accountable the next day The commenter didn't say it was the only motivator, they said it was a motivator. It isn't some black or white thing- it's just another aspect. Unless you naively think your developers are robots, they will all have varying levels of motivation at different times, and this can help.
badthingfactory 12y ago
I don't agree with this. People who aren't motivated or didn't do anything just make things up. One day I helped another developer fix a simple bug. By help, I mean I sat on his computer and fixed it while he watched. It took me ~20 seconds. He then talked about how he fixed the bug in detail for a minute and a half the next day. Apparently that was all "he" accomplished. Everyone (myself included) stood silently and nodded our heads.
- woof 12y ago
  "Everyone (myself included) stood silently and nodded our heads." Why did you applauded his behaviour? So you could blame the method (which you didn't follow) later?
  - gknoy 12y ago
    badthingfactory may have been waiting for a more tactful time to say it, rather than blurting out "You're full of it, I did that for you!" in the team meeting. While such a thing may be true, and may need to be communicated to a manager, it probably looks bad to do it in front of one's peers.
    - badthingfactory 12y ago
      This is exactly what happened. That particular individual didn't last very long on that team.
    - woof 12y ago
      If so, what's his point?
coldtea 12y ago
>which is to motivate me to do something today which I will be able to talk about tomorrow. If you're not motivated to do the items in your Sprint anyway, then you got a bigger problem than what your standup can fix...
barik 12y ago
> which is to motivate me to do something today which I will be able to talk about tomorrow. I've actually wondered about this, ever since finding inconsistencies in the psychology literature about this subject, particularly those which echo my own experiences. For example, Ordóñez and colleagues' 2009 paper, "Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting", identifies some of the negative effects: "narrow focus that neglects nongoal areas, distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation." Other work related (Sivers, McGonigal, etc.) to this effect has also argued that announcing your goals make you less motivated to accomplish them. There's yet other work, by Brown (in the book Daring Greatly) that shows that for certain personalities, these types of environments have a very opposite effect to enhancing motivation: instead, they generate anxiety, guilt, embarrassment, humiliation, and even shame. I'm not doubting your experience, but my experience is more aligned with the items I've just mentioned. So it'd be interesting to try to tease out why some people experience the benefits you outlined, while others don't, even within the same scrum team. At one point, I conducted an informal study within our own team on scrum experiences and the results are completely bimodal. It's perplexing.

by kogus 12y ago

derekp7 12y ago

That seems to motivate you to do something that can be talked (bragged) about, not something that is actually useful/needed, that takes more than a day to work out fully.

Finster 12y ago

As a lead developer, if my developers are only motivated to do something each day because of being held accountable the next day, then I hired the wrong people. I want people to be self-starters. I shouldn't have to babysit and micromanage what they're doing each day. We use stand-ups as opportunities to discuss obstacles that people are encountering and discuss opportunities for pair programming. I use them as an option in my training toolkit. If we're working on fairly routine things (like setting up unit tests, database layers, etc.) then I don't bother with stand-ups at all unless I sense a need (like someone hitting a wall).

claar 12y ago
"Self-starter" is one of many good qualities for a developer. Here are some others off the top of my head: * Creative * Detail-oriented * Outside-the-box-thinker * Insightful * Meticulous .. and so on. I've found that with any such list, people will already excel in some, and still be growing in the others. Oftentimes these attributes are contrary to each other -- your most creative developer is probably not your most detail-oriented developer, for instance. If you restrict your hires to all excel in a single attribute, such as "self-starter", you may be missing out on some fantastic developers who excel in other things. In short, some of your developers may very well find daily accountability to be helpful, and this doesn't necessarily mean they aren't fantastic developers in other ways.
Scarfleece 12y ago
There are plenty of talented, productive people who aren't self-starters. Your company will be missing out on them. You can easily say they're the wrong people, but you could also say you're the wrong leader. Rant: Not everyone is an isolation-loving codemonkey. Some people need the feelings of team involvement, urgency and repercussions. If I'm just left to sit in the corner all day, and no one knows what I'm doing, and no one gives a shit if I do nothing... guess what? I'm going to end up doing nothing. Perhaps people like me are flawed, but we're still very talented and capable -- and not every company can afford to pass over the extroverted developers.
blazespin 12y ago
"I shouldn't have to babysit and micromanage what they're doing each day." Sorry, you call 15 minutes a day micromanaging? Anyways, I agree with some of the complaints. The tools can help out a lot. I disagree about the firefighting comment though. The whole point of scrum is not to firefight and leave that up to the scrum master so you don't lose focus.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
fsloth 12y ago
" I shouldn't have to babysit and micromanage what they're doing each day." But the standup is not about you micromanaging. The standup is about the team. It's not about having an accountability red-flag to force people into labour, it's about creating a benign cultural incentive to work. Some people actually like discussing what they've done. And if someone is having a slight episode of procrastination then knowing one needs to tell the next day gives an extra motivation to sharpen up. It's not about putting collars and leashes on people. It's about giving visibility to work. Often visibility without explicit punishments nor rewards is sufficient to give an extra boost to efforts. It's an automatic reminder to people on what is important, without being irritating or nagging.
mehwoot 12y ago
As a lead developer, if my developers are only motivated to do something each day because of being held accountable the next day The commenter didn't say it was the only motivator, they said it was a motivator. It isn't some black or white thing- it's just another aspect. Unless you naively think your developers are robots, they will all have varying levels of motivation at different times, and this can help.

badthingfactory 12y ago

I don't agree with this. People who aren't motivated or didn't do anything just make things up. One day I helped another developer fix a simple bug. By help, I mean I sat on his computer and fixed it while he watched. It took me ~20 seconds. He then talked about how he fixed the bug in detail for a minute and a half the next day. Apparently that was all "he" accomplished. Everyone (myself included) stood silently and nodded our heads.

woof 12y ago
"Everyone (myself included) stood silently and nodded our heads." Why did you applauded his behaviour? So you could blame the method (which you didn't follow) later?
- gknoy 12y ago
  badthingfactory may have been waiting for a more tactful time to say it, rather than blurting out "You're full of it, I did that for you!" in the team meeting. While such a thing may be true, and may need to be communicated to a manager, it probably looks bad to do it in front of one's peers.
  - badthingfactory 12y ago
    This is exactly what happened. That particular individual didn't last very long on that team.
  - woof 12y ago
    If so, what's his point?

coldtea 12y ago

>which is to motivate me to do something today which I will be able to talk about tomorrow. If you're not motivated to do the items in your Sprint anyway, then you got a bigger problem than what your standup can fix...

barik 12y ago

> which is to motivate me to do something today which I will be able to talk about tomorrow. I've actually wondered about this, ever since finding inconsistencies in the psychology literature about this subject, particularly those which echo my own experiences. For example, Ordóñez and colleagues' 2009 paper, "Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting", identifies some of the negative effects: "narrow focus that neglects nongoal areas, distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation." Other work related (Sivers, McGonigal, etc.) to this effect has also argued that announcing your goals make you less motivated to accomplish them. There's yet other work, by Brown (in the book Daring Greatly) that shows that for certain personalities, these types of environments have a very opposite effect to enhancing motivation: instead, they generate anxiety, guilt, embarrassment, humiliation, and even shame. I'm not doubting your experience, but my experience is more aligned with the items I've just mentioned. So it'd be interesting to try to tease out why some people experience the benefits you outlined, while others don't, even within the same scrum team. At one point, I conducted an informal study within our own team on scrum experiences and the results are completely bimodal. It's perplexing.