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You are not alone. I despise stand-ups with a passion. It is not because I haven't given them a shot - I have spent (wasted) ~1000 x 15 min (avg) of my life on

by abawany 12y ago

You are not alone. I despise stand-ups with a passion. It is not because I haven't given them a shot - I have spent (wasted) ~1000 x 15 min (avg) of my life on this useless misery with nothing to show for it but an overabundance of stomach acid. In my last job (best one of my career so far), I was able to convince my superb director that stand-ups suck and he allowed us to replace them with a meeting-free written-by-a-certain-time variant. What followed for our team was one of the most productive periods that I have ever witnessed. This contrast convinced me that stand-ups are one of the reasons development has started to suck for most developers; we are being gang-statused to death by cargo-culting ignoramuses. When I saw the movie Zero Theorem, I instantly sympathized with poor Qohen Leth - he just wants to work but is constantly harassed and statused by various minders, who really should not exist in an efficient workplace. In my current job, this tired old stand-up specter rose its ugly head once again today, for reasons that have nothing to do with the development team's productivity. I am ready to quit if it actually makes an appearance - my notice is ready in my drafts folder.

vpeters25 12y ago
Did you have to attend other meetings during the week besides the daily standup? 15 min is the limit of the standup but it should rarely get to that. A well run scrum team does daily standups in less than 5 minutes. In agile, the team self manages and decides how much of the process they want to follow: if some higher up comes down dictating "thou shall be standups", I would be giving my notice too.
- abawany 12y ago
  I had multiple other meetings daily but I felt these had more utility as they were related to design and requirements. We were unfortunately forced into daily stand-ups due to a department-wide "process" so to your point about self-managing, that was quite absent here. I see a lot of people talk about 5 min stand-ups or 15 min stand-ups but that misses the point. The main issue is interrupting someone for any period of time for an (IMO) unproductive and trivial statusing when so many other methods exist to get their daily status and leave them alone.
  - vpeters25 12y ago
    What if I tell you in exchange for 5 mins everyday you no longer have to attend any other daily/weekly meetings? Does it sound like a good trade off? > I had multiple other meetings daily but I felt these had more utility as they were related to design and requirements. Well, that's a problem. In agile there should be only one planning meeting per iteration where you discuss design and requirements. In my last job we agreed to designate one team member as a rotating "support guy" for the iteration. One guy takes the plunge, gets interrupted all the time and attends all meetings so nobody else has to. It worked great.

by abawany 12y ago

vpeters25 12y ago

Did you have to attend other meetings during the week besides the daily standup? 15 min is the limit of the standup but it should rarely get to that. A well run scrum team does daily standups in less than 5 minutes. In agile, the team self manages and decides how much of the process they want to follow: if some higher up comes down dictating "thou shall be standups", I would be giving my notice too.

abawany 12y ago
I had multiple other meetings daily but I felt these had more utility as they were related to design and requirements. We were unfortunately forced into daily stand-ups due to a department-wide "process" so to your point about self-managing, that was quite absent here. I see a lot of people talk about 5 min stand-ups or 15 min stand-ups but that misses the point. The main issue is interrupting someone for any period of time for an (IMO) unproductive and trivial statusing when so many other methods exist to get their daily status and leave them alone.
- vpeters25 12y ago
  What if I tell you in exchange for 5 mins everyday you no longer have to attend any other daily/weekly meetings? Does it sound like a good trade off? > I had multiple other meetings daily but I felt these had more utility as they were related to design and requirements. Well, that's a problem. In agile there should be only one planning meeting per iteration where you discuss design and requirements. In my last job we agreed to designate one team member as a rotating "support guy" for the iteration. One guy takes the plunge, gets interrupted all the time and attends all meetings so nobody else has to. It worked great.