21–30 of 156 posts
We also don't really give two shits about status updates. We care more about what people have actually done, which is what we use Cadence for. Most of our updates are something like "pushed a draft PR for X purpose" and not "still working on the same thing yawn".
In my experience, async standups mean everyone posts their status and does not read any other status. Counterpoint: In my experience, at synchronous standups, people totally ignore everyone until its their time to speak, and then share an update, and then go back to not listening.
I think if your standup can be async, then it's ineffective, and you should get rid of it. And to be clear, that's fine! Not every team needs standups. The only value in a standup is when team members actually share ideas about what they're working on. The detailed conversation happens outside the standup, but the purpose of the standup is just to get that moment of "I know about that, let's talk". In that case, havi…
If you can successfully get unblocked async over slack/email/whatever, there isn't a need a for standups. That just means you have a functioning line of communication for your team.
Stand ups should solve the problem of "I need to get unblocked and I can't get my teams attention effectively". If async "standups" solve that, great. But it's not a one size fits all solution, and imo, shouldn't even be called a standup.
>But for the life of me, what I can't figure out is why some teams have good ones, and some don't.
IME it's the level of interaction of product/management/scrum-masters that make the difference. Good standups consist of just engineer focused updates/requests. Bad ones are progress reports and have participation of anyone not actively contributing to the sprint.
I think if your standup can be async, then it's ineffective, and you should get rid of it. And to be clear, that's fine! Not every team needs standups. The only value in a standup is when team members actually share ideas about what they're working on. The detailed conversation happens outside the standup, but the purpose of the standup is just to get that moment of "I know about that, let's talk". In that case, havi…
So maybe that's part of the problem, standup means whatever it happens to mean. You could replace the entire title of this post with "context should be shared async".
In my experience, async standups mean everyone posts their status and does not read any other status. Counterpoint: In my experience, at synchronous standups, people totally ignore everyone until its their time to speak, and then share an update, and then go back to not listening.
Those sound like relatively useless statuses then. Getting people together doesn't increase inherently increase the usefulness of updates, although sometimes it helps by accident since people ask questions. When it works, it's just painting over bad management.
I think if your standup can be async, then it's ineffective, and you should get rid of it. And to be clear, that's fine! Not every team needs standups. The only value in a standup is when team members actually share ideas about what they're working on. The detailed conversation happens outside the standup, but the purpose of the standup is just to get that moment of "I know about that, let's talk". In that case, havi…
Agreed. Async stand ups are an agile smell. If you can successfully get unblocked async over slack/email/whatever, there isn't a need a for standups. That just means you have a functioning line of communication for your team. Stand ups should solve the problem of "I need to get unblocked and I can't get my teams attention effectively". If async "standups" solve that, great. But it's not a one size fits all solution,…
I think if your standup can be async, then it's ineffective, and you should get rid of it. And to be clear, that's fine! Not every team needs standups. The only value in a standup is when team members actually share ideas about what they're working on. The detailed conversation happens outside the standup, but the purpose of the standup is just to get that moment of "I know about that, let's talk". In that case, havi…
Agreed. Async stand ups are an agile smell. If you can successfully get unblocked async over slack/email/whatever, there isn't a need a for standups. That just means you have a functioning line of communication for your team. Stand ups should solve the problem of "I need to get unblocked and I can't get my teams attention effectively". If async "standups" solve that, great. But it's not a one size fits all solution,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those sound like relatively useless statuses then. Getting people together doesn't increase inherently increase the usefulness of updates, although sometimes it helps by accident since people ask questions. When it works, it's just painting over bad management.
Daily standups are not a solution to people not caring about what their peers are doing, is my point. You can't make people care, even if you make them show up.
What tends to happen instead of the no-true-scotsman fallacy. If standups aren't working (they probably aren't) you must not be doing standups properly.
The whole purpose of daily standups is to be short, to the point, and force developers to discuss blockers. That can't be async, because I need the other members of the team to answer. The issue the author is addressing is that for some, this is wasted time. But a) that's why these meetings are short, thus the standing up part, and b) Usually it isn't but an opportunity for more seniors to chime in with suggestions.…
> the best teams actually unblock problems as they come up
Sure, but that‘s (usually) not how the world works and that‘s why we have daily stand-ups.