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You don’t need standups

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Re: You don’t need standups

#21

Post by koolba »

jiveturkey wrote: post #17
zebraflask wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This could work well in teams where the engineers are all competent and really just need the PM to stay out of their way. In weak teams, this could easily see an end-of-quarter with unmet deliverables and other management messes. A lot of people would take advantage of the hands-off approach as much as they could. Either way, Agile is ridiculous so I agree with the author about that.

> In weak teams, Agile is largely about managing weaker teams.

More generally, management is largely about weaker teams.

Re: You don’t need standups

#22

Post by nherment »

jiveturkey wrote: post #15

ah, gratuitous obscenity. the sign of someone that really knows what they're doing, from whom we should take advice. it's still worth reading, not for what it says but what is between the lines. "how not to do sprints". admittedly this isn't (must not be, i guess) common, but at my current $JOB we do dedicate entire sprints to tech debt. remote people phone into our sprints and are well included. it actually HELPS re…

I am a bit saddened by the fact you are getting downvoted.

Swearing adds nothing to the author's arguments and I believe you are spot-on on the analysis of the blog post.

Edit:

I missed the following from HN's guidelines

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Sounds very fair. The more you know... :)

Re: You don’t need standups

#23

Post by k2xl »

I've been managing engineering teams for a few jobs now, but I think this article suffers from some logical fallacies.

"You don't need stand-ups"

I've actually tried this multiple times with multiple teams in my career. The truth is, is that sure no stand-ups can work... _sometimes_. Some teams some teams we ended up doing 15 minute enforced with a stopwatch stand-ups, we ended up doing a slack standup, and some teams we skipped them altogether.

I too, when I had my first engineering team skip stand-ups and retros felt like I had unlocked some secret in management, as work was indeed getting done.

But the very next team I tried it on it failed miserably. Tons of conflicts, duplicated work, etc. We also tried to "fix them as they went" but what ended up happening is that bringing up and trying to resolve every issue when it happened got difficult. Naturally we kept "tabling" issues to discuss later and we never did until we create monthly meetings to discuss all the issues together. Funny how a "retro" ended up organically forming.

The truth is, every team is different. What works with one team won't work with another. I've found that as a general rule, a regular check in with engineers help align goals and what they are working on. And a somewhat regular cadence of evaluating _how_ you do work makes sense.

I also think the authors marriage analogy is weak. At work, your team isn't a family. It's a team. You can't fire family members. A team you need to stay consistently plugged in because you are trying to complete specific objectives. Marriage is rarely like that.

Re: You don’t need standups

#24

Post by caymanjim »

This sounds to me like a team that went through the agile rituals until everyone was familiar with the benefits and methodologies and got rid of the formal structure once that happened. That's fine. But having structure in place around these things is helpful to newcomers, especially when the entire larger organization is trying to transition from a waterfall process or no process at all.

The list of rituals the author got rid of shows that the team has already learned the more abstract values and benefits and is doing them real-time instead of scheduling them as standalone meetings and sessions. It doesn't mean these things have no value; it means the team is a well-oiled machine.

Except standups. Standups are, have always been, and always will be a waste of time.

Re: You don’t need standups

#25

Post by wgjordan »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #19
dang wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please not rant like this to HN? You may have a substantive point in there but you need to make it more thoughtfully.

Could you please elaborate? I don't feel like "like this" and "thoughtfully" are constructive pieces of feedback for comments.

> Could you please elaborate?

'Bull-fucking-shit' was literally the first word in your comment.

Re: You don’t need standups

#26

Post by haltingthoughts »

tapvt wrote: post #6

I'd really like to hear thoughts on how this applies to remote teams. I find that async standups via slack are pretty damn helpful for keeping everyone appraised of what is going on across 5 timezones. Process and communication are kind of key, aren't they?

There is a good argument to be made that supporting remote work yeilds gains in processes. See e.g. remoteonly.org

Re: You don’t need standups

#27

Post by andrewmcwatters »

wgjordan wrote: post #25
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please elaborate? I don't feel like "like this" and "thoughtfully" are constructive pieces of feedback for comments.

> Could you please elaborate? 'Bull-fucking-shit' was literally the first word in your comment.

And? https://hn.algolia.com/?q=&query=bull-fucking-shit&sort=byPo...

Re: You don’t need standups

#28

Post by ravenstine »

One thing I don't like about standups is that they can create a false sense of either blockage or someone being ineffective at their job. For instance, there have been many times where I've worked on a task or a set or related tasks for weeks or months, simply because the tasks required a lot of forethought and careful planning. There were times I somewhat dreaded standups because I knew that I'd say that I'm doing the same thing I'd been doing for the last several days, like a broken record. I don't want to have to say "Yup, still workin' on those bugs" every morning. When shit's fixed or I've completed a feature, I'll let you know.

In fact, all I like about standups is seeing my team mates once a day. Besides that, there's almost no upside. Literally everyone can read the project board to see what we're up to. If you're really so curious as to what everyone is doing, why not just look at that?

Re: You don’t need standups

#29

Post by jaggederest »

tapvt wrote: post #6

I'd really like to hear thoughts on how this applies to remote teams. I find that async standups via slack are pretty damn helpful for keeping everyone appraised of what is going on across 5 timezones. Process and communication are kind of key, aren't they?

I don't think slack standups are a useful way to communicate this. I'd rather have it in the form of trello or pivotal tracker, for example, because those have audit logs and commentary. By all means, have people update those things at the beginning or ending of the day on a routine basis, but doing it in chat is just too ephemeral for me.

I think it's often useful to ping people if you know you're going to need their help, for example, but that's not precisely a standup. It's just scheduling and communication.

Re: You don’t need standups

#30

Post by dang »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #27
wgjordan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could you please elaborate? 'Bull-fucking-shit' was literally the first word in your comment.

And? https://hn.algolia.com/?q=&query=bull-fucking-shit&sort=byPo...

It's basically the online equivalent of spittle flying out of your mouth while berating someone.
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