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Daily standups should be async

cadencework.com

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141–150 of 156 posts

Re: Daily standups should be async

#141

Post by jameshart »

Standups as status-updates is an awful antipattern that turns so many people off agile - and specifically Scrum.

Standups where each person takes their turn and recites the mantra: 'Yesterday, worked on ticket HN-1234. Today, I'll still be working on it. No blockers.' Sure - if that's all you do, do it asynchronously. Please. Preferably by just updating the Jira ticket, not posting it in Slack. Or... just, don't, because apparently this has no impact on what you do.

If all that happens in the standup is everyone shares what they did yesterday, what they're going to do today, and what's blocking them, then... then what? We shared a bunch of information across the team. What are we going to do about it? Is Dave going to change his plan for the day to instead help unblock Karen? Is Peter, now he has heard what Rachel did yesterday, going to do anything different than he just said he was going to do?

Daily standups are best when they are really daily replanning meetings. As a team - look at the goal for the sprint. Is it still the right goal? Are we going to get it done? Did anyone do anything that gets us closer yesterday? Does the plan for what we do today still seem like the right thing to do to get us there? Is anything interfering with our chances of getting there?

Everyone leaves knowing what everyone else on the team plans to do to move things forward today.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#142

Post by tonymet »

benefit is raising blockers, ideally resolving them or holding people to follow up, and reducing finger pointing (e.g. I'd have my UI done if jane just finished the API -- ok let's grab jane and ask her what's up).

Re: Daily standups should be async

#143

Post by the_gipsy »

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…

Why would you wait until a specific time of day, if it's so important (blocker)? Why waste everyone's time, every time?

Either it's a glorified status update, or it's incredibly inefficient compared to just resolving issues on the spot or at appropriate times.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#144

Post by karatestomp »

JJMcJ wrote: post #35

I have yet to be in a standup where I felt safe admitting I was blocked. The manager and project manager are there to glare at anyone who isn't "maintaining velocity".

I'm thinking about asking to sit (haha) in or call into a standup, next place I look at, after I have an offer but before I take it. If there's even a hint of this kind of toxic shit I'll know to run, fast. If the manager I'm talking to is like "well I guess we can arrange that, but they're usually under five minutes so there's not much to hear, and I'm not in them so I'll put you in touch with [team lead or maybe project manager] who runs them" then that'll tell me what I need to know without even bothering.

I'm increasingly convinced that if you 1) have standups, and they're 2) more than the teensiest bit dysfunctional, you've probably got some badly fucked-up processes and attitudes in general. I mean it does not get simpler than a standup, so if you've decided to have them but can't get them mostly-right, then that's not a good sign. Sadly, this may describe most businesses.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#146

Post by mdu96 »

maitredusoi wrote: post #85

That was also one of my side project idea. But the concept should go further: with a time limit ! My idea was that you should not be allowed to speak about your daily task more than 42 second on a video record shared to all you team mates.

interesting! why 42 seconds? did you ever end up building this?

Re: Daily standups should be async

#147

Post by mdu96 »

zachware wrote: post #50

One thing I always find frustrating about posts like this is that they identify a problem but make no attempt to help articulate a path to a solution. It's reasonable to suggest standups and other meetings be async. What would be better is to take the time to design a proposed solution for solving the problem standups solve, even if it ends up being a messy or bad one. That's a much more effective way to complain abo…

The product we're building, Cadence, is actually our solution to the daily standup problem.

Let me know if you'd be interested in trying our product out -- seems like you'd give great feedback. My email is melissa@cadencework.com

Re: Daily standups should be async

#148

Post by mdu96 »

modo_ wrote: post #79

My team has been testing out a hybrid of the two-- we use a slackbot to gather our answers to the three questions before standup begins. Then we use the meeting time to discuss anything that might have come up as a result of the slack posts. We've really liked it so far. It cuts out a lot of the bad parts of synchronous standup like trying to remember what you did yesterday on the spot, but still leaves us with the o…

that's super interesting! would you be open to chatting more? i'd love to ask you some questions about your workflow and hear your feedback on cadence, seems like you've got some great opinions. my email is melissa@cadencework.com

Re: Daily standups should be async

#149

Post by lukey_q »

polishdude20 wrote: post #124
lukey_q wrote: post #12

I totally agree with the idea that teams should remove blockers as they come up. If someone on my team runs into a blocker 10 minutes after the standup, I hope for everyone's sake that they don't wait until tomorrow's standup to say something, if only because being blocked for a whole day is not really what you'd call "morale boosting". I'm not a huge fan of in-person standups, but if you're going to do them really m…

What's this thing with blockers? I'm not in software and it seems like they're just problems you encounter that need to be resolved before you can continue working? Why not go to your co-workers desk or message them and deal with it on the spot?

You've got it exactly right. It's something you need someone else's help with, and ideally you can just go ask them for help.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#150

Post by pnako »

Alice: Yesterday I looked at ticket ABC123, to fix the database. I had some issue with the network so I'm following up with IT. Today I'll look at ticket XYZ385.

Bob: Yesterday I was working on the migration to the Kokomalta framework. I'll keep doing it today.

Charlie: Yesterday I looked at fixing the printing bugs. Today I'll do more bug fixing.

I've worked in different companies, industries, countries and it's always the same stupid thing, some sort of cargo cult practice that achieves absolutely nothing and wastes everyone's time. As a manager if I want to know the status of some project I ask the person, I don't wait until 10am the next day. And if someone is blocked, reach out when you're blocked to whoever can unblock you. That's it. That is actually agile, not that stupid daily ceremony.

The IT world is full of those dumb cargo cultish practices. One I've started noticing is to prefix everything with "as a user" when writing "stories and epics". "As a user, when I click there I want to have a window with that input box and this text written here". Super useful! I know there's a proper way to do it ("as a senior compliance officer, I want a daily report about ABC"), but no one does it in practice.

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