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Daily standups should be async

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Re: Daily standups should be async

#111

Post by wiml »

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?

In my experience, the "blockers" that standups help with are not so clear cut. Of course if I reach a point where I clearly can't proceed without X, I'll email/slack/async-request the person who might be able to get me X, and work on something else until that resolves.

What standups help with (IMexperience) are situations where you're spending a lot of time on something but it's not really clear whether you're making progress. Maybe someone has dealt with that API before on a previous project and knows you're doomed, or how to help. Maybe someone has a dusty old CS memory that will turn your O(n!) to O(n). Or maybe — and I don't think we should discount the usefulness of this — it just provides reassurance that yes this is a thorny problem, there isn't an obvious alternative you've missed, you're not wasting your time or being stupid. That makes a big difference in morale, and morale makes a big difference in productivity.

Sure, there's some benefit in having a daily status report to your manager who is presumably also at the standup, but that's not the main benefit of a daily standup, IMHO. If that is the only benefit you're getting from it, then sure, cancel the standup.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#112

Post by Clubber »

rahulpyd1 wrote: post #103

I have come to believe that Agile is a hoax and Scrum too is a hoax. Standup meeting is a bigger hoax. Anyways, long before I understood this I wrote about why the hoaxes should happen towards the end of the day. http://www.rahul.ws/on-daily-meetings.html

Yes, they're both ways for consultants to make money. Essentially a marketing gimmick for managers who don't know how to run a development department because they were never developers to begin with and they don't trust developers to manage themselves. It's been going strong for 20 years and is probably a billion dollar industry. Just another part of the US scam economy.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#113

Post by at_a_remove »

jeffbee wrote: post #41
stephc_int13 wrote: post #31

In my opinion, standups are useless - asynchronous or not. Waiting until the next standup to resolve blockers is clearly not efficient. What I've observed during standups is mostly people staring at the void waiting their turn and a few obnoxious nerds trying to bullshit their way up the hierarchy by talking way too much for their own good. The best communication I've seen was during brainstorm meetings.

Standups ensure your team cannot achieve anything meaningful. Imagine having a standup at the caltech physics department with Feynman et al. "What did you do since yesterday, Dick?" "Well I sat at my desk and pondered the nature of matter." "Anything blocking you?" "We don't understand the nature of matter." "What are you going to do today?" "Go down to the titty bar and ponder the nature of matter".

I would agree that a lot of my greatest breakthroughs came from periods of time that felt like, to me, I was just staring into space waiting for my brain to kick out something useful, and I would have no idea when that would happen. And if it something that is going to stop everything, I can fiddle around commenting code and doing bits that require little thinking as I wait for inspiration to strike, but it seems to show up on its own time.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#114

Post by overgard »

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.…

If I have a blocker, and I wait until the next day to bring it up in standup instead of actually doing something about it at the time directly with the parties involved, I'm either working in a massively bureaucratic place, the decision makers are inaccessible, or I'm wasting everyone's time with shyness.

TBH the only time I'd really think it'd be useful to bring up a blocker in standup is if I was throwing someone under the bus for not helping and I wanted to be like "not my fault!". I don't do that, but it seems like the only purpose.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#115

Post by platz »

hashmal wrote: post #87
protonimitate wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> Async stand ups are an agile smell. That thinking is an agile smell. Teams choose their own processes.

No reason to discuss anything then I guess, everyone needs to just invent their own rules without talking to anyone else.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#116

Post by jbergstroem »

I like (1: Social. By seeing my coworkers over video I remind myself that I work with people, not pull requests or comments. Perhaps more relevant these times.

2: Discovery. 2.1: A minute or two to just touch on overall goals can instill team spirit. Sales target hit? No angry customers? Perhaps a complaint. It helps with team alignment 2.2: A quick rundown on how each persons day is looking / what people are working on. Perhaps not for blocking but sometimes it is useful to connect two people and let them follow up post-meeting.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#117

Post by pathseeker »

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…

>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".

If the purpose of the standup is to tell people what you're working on and not have any detailed conversations, then that's the best argument for making it async that I've heard.

The optimal standup seems to be everyone posts to channel by 10am what they are planning on doing for the day and if they want help. Everyone reads each other's and replies as needed. Done

Re: Daily standups should be async

#118

Post by mdu96 »

rahulpyd1 wrote: post #103

I have come to believe that Agile is a hoax and Scrum too is a hoax. Standup meeting is a bigger hoax. Anyways, long before I understood this I wrote about why the hoaxes should happen towards the end of the day. http://www.rahul.ws/on-daily-meetings.html

@rahulpyd, love your post!

Re: Daily standups should be async

#120

Post by RogerL »

the_other wrote: post #83
jeffbee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standups ensure your team cannot achieve anything meaningful. Imagine having a standup at the caltech physics department with Feynman et al. "What did you do since yesterday, Dick?" "Well I sat at my desk and pondered the nature of matter." "Anything blocking you?" "We don't understand the nature of matter." "What are you going to do today?" "Go down to the titty bar and ponder the nature of matter".

That’s not how you do stand-up. It should more like: I’m struggling to imagine how so-and-so particle gets the energy to reach the next quantum state. Anyone want to share a blackboard? This is gonna take us about six pots of coffee to solve I reckon.

I chat with people all the time when I'm looking for a creative break out. The idea that it is just going to happen at 10:30am on a daily schedule is baffling to me.

I mean, if your team is entirely dysfunctional I can see how doing this can kick start thinking about how to solve development better. Better than nothing. But this entire thread is basically "you are doing it wrong, this is the correct process". There ain't no process (mostly).

Perhaps its a way to make terrible, unmotivated developers more productive. I dunno. I've been working from home since March, and haven't missed stand up at all. Everything gets done. Conversations that have to happen still happen. Because we take our job seriously and know enough to reach out when we need to (love my current team, small as it is).

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