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Daily standups should be async

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Re: Daily standups should be async

#51

Post by jkingsbery »

It's true that most daily standups revolve around "The Three Questions," but that's not the point of stand-ups. The point is, every day the team has a forum where it can potentially change course. It's an opportunity to identify whether my plan for the next 24 hours is still valid, in a similar way to how sprint planning lets the team change course for the next 2 weeks. It doesn't solve blockers, true, but it does allow triaging blockers, and helps to ensure that if someone is blocked you don't have no one jumping in to help (or everyone jumping in to help, which is also disruptive).

Most teams I've been on with ineffective standups are usually a group of engineers working on independent work streams, who if they had to help each other wouldn't know how. The teams that have effective standups have a clear team goal, and engineers are willing to stop what they're working on in order to ensure that the most important work is getting finished.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#52

Post by Benjammer »

protonimitate wrote: post #24
hyperpape wrote: post #6

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,…

Literally had a manager say "oh, they're supposed to be for unblocking? I just thought it was an easy way for me to report up the chain on what my team is working on, that's why I told people to just write it on Slack to make it easier for them." ugh

Re: Daily standups should be async

#53

Post by prepperpotts »

I've definitely spent a lot of time in standups that are effectively pure micromanage-y accountability plays — what are you working on today. Those were a huge waste of time. In the instances where people could actually help me out, though, they've been very helpful.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#54

Post by brianpursley »

Best standup process I ever had was just a slack channel called standups, and everyone just posted a couple sentences sometime during the morning: what they did yesterday, and what they plan to do today.

It was great because first of all there is a history everyone can look back on, which can save some unnecessary communication and coordination. But most importantly it avoids the dreaded sidetrack conversation that turns your standup into a 20 minute meeting.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#55

Post by julienb_sea »

This article is monumentally pointless. For one thing it ignores how unlikely it is that your team is actually going to read through everyone's async standup update. Remote standup zooms kinda suck, and certainly make it easy to not pay attention. But there is value in having the team come together, having an open line of communication about what work is getting done, and a forum for updates.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#56

Post by high_derivative »

You know who likes standups?

Program managers, project managers, and useless middle-managers. What do they have in common? They get to exercise power and justify their existence through calling extra meetings like new project-specific standups.

Who hates standups? Everyone else, basically.

Really makes you think..

Re: Daily standups should be async

#58

Post by jkingsbery »

jmondi wrote: post #33
ohduran wrote: post #5

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.…

Am I the only one who raises a flag immediately when there is a blocker? Why would I wait until the next day?

They're not mutually exclusive. Especially at a time when everyone is remote and it's easy to miss emails/slack messages, etc., having a dedicated time to say "Hey all, I'm still waiting on X" is helpful.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#59

Post by adrianmonk »

I think that relatively often part of the real motivation for standups is to put people on the spot a little bit to create pressure and/or accountability.

You can ask whether that's a good thing or true to the original vision, but if that's part of what someone aims to get out of standups, then that probably requires them to be face-to-face.

I'm not a big fan of seeing negative emotions (shame, guilt, fear, envy) used to motivate employees (especially if it's the only thing in a manager's bag of tricks) but in small doses it can be OK. So maybe it's not ridiculous if part of the value of the standup is the threat of feeling like an ass if you have to say, "Sorry, I basically got nothing done since the last standup."

Re: Daily standups should be async

#60

Post by lazyasciiart »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40
_t0du wrote: post #7

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.

> In my experience, async standups mean everyone posts their status and does not read any other status. That has been my experience, too. Going async sends a message that people don't need to care about what their team members are working on. That's a dream come true for the people who just want to pull Jira tickets out of the queue, finish them in isolation, and then collect a paycheck. However, it doesn't make for…

Holding a daily standup sends the message that people aren't expected to be talking to other people on the team regularly, and actively requesting help when they need it. That's a dream come true for the people who just want to pull Jira tickets out of the queue, finish them in isolation, and then collect a paycheck. However, it doesn't make for great team cohesion and knowledge sharing.
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