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You don’t need standups

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Re: You don’t need standups

#321

Post by Scarblac »

munk-a wrote: post #174
ahelwer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's useless because everybody else tunes out. Nobody cares what debugging methods you tried on some project they've never touched. If you need help you can just ask somebody.

I think your team is too big then. Don't have company wide standups, have a standup per team and possibly role. If you're working on a web stack have a standup where the backend devs talk, one for the DBAs (if that's a thing you have) one for the front-end people... If there's someone in a product manager role they might want to attend all the meetings but likely not. If a clear majority of the audience isn't interes…

My team is about 8 people, but we work on about 15 projects, some with about 3 FTE, some take up a few hours per week of one person on average. It happens that someone works on a project on his own for months at a time. There is some shared tech between them, but also a lot of specific stuff.

I thought that was the kind of situation he meant, where people zone out because they don't work on that project, but who knows.

You shouldn't assume too much about the environment other people work in.

Re: You don’t need standups

#322

Post by Scarblac »

kelnos wrote: post #149
chomp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not, but if your peer said "hey can someone help me with this task" in a standup, wouldn't you want to help them once the meeting is over?

Replace that with asking for help in slack or whatever, and you don't need a standup. And you also get help as soon as people's time is available, not the next day.

But then you'd need people to listen to some slack channel, and be distracted continuously throughout the day. That's worse.

Re: You don’t need standups

#323

Post by Scarblac »

taneq wrote: post #229
drunken-serval wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 never happened at any job I've had. It was always the entire team and we all had different projects. Sometimes entirely different applications.

That sounds like you were all on different teams, in the sense being used here, and probably shouldn't have all been in the same standup together apart from maybe a once-a-week catchup.

But you are in the same team in all the other senses, mostly that these are the people you work with in the long term. Some projects you do alone, some with Bob, others with almost everyone, but the team members want to feel like a team and have an idea of what everyone's working on.

Re: You don’t need standups

#324

Post by Scarblac »

some_account wrote: post #82
chomp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"working on bugs" is not a great update, it's opaque and doesn't help your team or your leader get a picture of what you're struggling with. "I tried this and this and measured this latency from the application and suspect it's a race condition, I checked this code and feel like I'm on the right track, and if someone wants to take a second set of eyes on my bug I would appreciate it" is a much much better update. Sta…

What if I don't want a team mate to look at something I'm working on? What if I just want to focus on building, not explaining and sharing? The current trend of "agile" is just another form of micro management. It's not good for the programmers at all, it's only good for product owners and team leads who are coordinating resources. Because it's micro management. We just call it something else now. It forces developer…

It's a crime that Scrum is allowed to call itself "Agile". Look at the Agile Manifesto again, then look at Scrum. Almost complete opposties.

Re: You don’t need standups

#325

Post by Scarblac »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #91
some_account wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don't want a team mate to look at something I'm working on? What if I just want to focus on building, not explaining and sharing? The current trend of "agile" is just another form of micro management. It's not good for the programmers at all, it's only good for product owners and team leads who are coordinating resources. Because it's micro management. We just call it something else now. It forces developer…

1. Agile is not personally great for programmers. 2. Agile is good for managers. 3. Managers run the business and make sure it exists. 4. Programmers need the business in order to have a job. 5. Agile is therefore good for the business, 6. And therefore Agile is good for Programmers, though not personally.

Agile is good for managers in that it gives them a feeling of being in control.

Agile is not actually for managers, in that productivity suffers a lot, less software with real value is produced.

But software productivity is notoriously hard to measure, so it is ignored.

Re: You don’t need standups

#326

Post by grappler »

ravenstine wrote: post #28

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 t…

I hate it because every approaching standing meeting feels like an approaching "rejustify your existence" checkin.

Even if I'm not going to be judged out loud in this meeting, I'm going to have to explain myself. I have a problem in front of me that I'm working to solve. Maybe I decided to do some reading about possible ways to solve it. Maybe I decided to learn one of the tools that I'll probably use in the course of solving it. Maybe I'll try a particular approach.

Whatever I decided to do yesterday, I have to decide how to frame it and describe it today. I can practically hear another engineer or manager thinking "why didn't you just X" where X is some simple thing involving less time and thought than what I did. And I don't want to have that conversation with them right now. I am still in the middle of it.

I want to be able to say in a few days, "Here's a solution! It meets the requirements and in a really elegant way if I do say so!" I live for that. I want the freedom and flexibility to get to that point without being probed every day about how I'm getting there. I used to do that, before scrums and standups took over the programming world, and it was great. Having a daily checkin robs me of that latitude.

I'll gladly pick someone's brain if I want their input or feel stuck. But if I want to think outside the box a bit, a daily checkin can feel like a pretty short leash.

Re: You don’t need standups

#327

Post by collinmanderson »

ravenstine wrote: post #28

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 t…

> In fact, all I like about standups is seeing my team mates once a day

This may sound a little funny, but at my work we do daily morning prayer from 9-9:30am (company-wide, 20-25 people). We sing a few songs with guitar, then talk about our weekend or personal life, or whatever. Some days it's more work related than others. Maybe we'll share a little about what we're working on, or bigger updates from managers, but it's definitely not a planning meeting.

It's awesome.

Re: You don’t need standups

#328

Post by collinmanderson »

Scarblac wrote: post #324
some_account wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don't want a team mate to look at something I'm working on? What if I just want to focus on building, not explaining and sharing? The current trend of "agile" is just another form of micro management. It's not good for the programmers at all, it's only good for product owners and team leads who are coordinating resources. Because it's micro management. We just call it something else now. It forces developer…

It's a crime that Scrum is allowed to call itself "Agile". Look at the Agile Manifesto again, then look at Scrum. Almost complete opposties.

Yes, it's a little disappointing that the term "Agile" pretty much now refers to Scrum.

Re: You don’t need standups

#329

Post by wool_gather »

joepour wrote: post #181

We do stand ups once a week on Monday morning to get everyone on the same page and focussed for new week. Each time a different dev runs it, chosen by the person who ran it last. Our stand ups are one of the most mentioned things in my 1:1s as everyone likes to hear what other people are working on. We then do a retro on Friday afternoon, sit outside and have a beer and chat about what worked and what didn’t. Not str…

> Not strictly agile

Sure it is, because agile is precisely supposed to be "whatever works for your team". Awesome that you've been able to find such a good, low-key process!

Re: You don’t need standups

#330

Post by rdtsc »

paulie_a wrote: post #258
refoundglory wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your goal for the sprint is "build widget" then your goal for the day should be "build part 3". You don't change priorities each day, you change how far along you are and where you expect to get to.

The term "Sprint" makes me cringe, it's meaningless in my experience. It doesn't effectively identify goals or deadlines. It's a stupid techie/hipster term that no one apparently pays attention to.

> The term "Sprint" makes me cringe,

Tried that once as a team. Then it became a derogatory joke word, haven't sprinted since. Well only in real life when playing tag with my kids.

Estimating, delivering on time, working together, can be hard. Someone deciding to rename it with a new label, doesn't usually solve the problem, though now everyone has a new label to make fun of.

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