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Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#31

Post by bluefirebrand »

obstacle1 wrote: post #30
bluefirebrand wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one has a blocker then it should be raised to the team in slack/email as soon as you realize you need help from the team. Waiting until daily stand-up doesn't seem sensible to me. The point of the daily stand-up is honestly more for identifying when people are struggling but not reaching out for help. A lot of people have a lone wolf attitude towards work even if they have a team so spotting when someone is avoi…

Ideally you wouldn't waste everyone on the team's time every day just to suss out individuals who potentially can't ask for help. A competent lead or manager should be able to identify those kinds of team members without a standup, and address the issue 1:1. If the lead or manager can't do that, why have a lead or manager at all?

I'm actually struggling to think of how a good lead or manager should go about identifying these problems.

By asking people what they are working on all day? "Hey can you tell me the status of xyz please" type things?

Wander by the cubicle and peek over the shoulder?

Feels like stuff that would get people accused of being micromanagers. Honestly far better imo to just have a pre-set, teamwide thing set up.

This also involves the whole team in identifying and solving blockers rather than everything going through a lead, who could then just become a bottleneck (or a human-shaped blocker)

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#32

Post by Tagbert »

Back in pre-covid times, for a while, we had a team with around 6 local devs and a couple of devs in other more remote (and earlier) time zones. We had the remote members give their standup in slack and the locals do an actual standup. They took turns reading the slack standup from the other members. We kept each other on track during standup for the most part though sometimes things would wander until we brought it back in. We tried to be conscious of the time but not rigid about it. We also did periodic calls of the whole team even though the times were not the most convenient for anyone. The team members liked each other and were helpful when needed and were willing to do occasional, short off-time calls to talk about longer term plans.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#33

Post by quantified »

theonething wrote: post #29
osivertsson wrote: post #5

I have done that a few times and I feel the value drops to almost zero, or in some instances even negative, by doing this. Standups should be short hence do them standing with no digital screens around and team-size is optimally ~5. 30-60 secs per person probably. Writing a line on Slack spreads them out and takes away more focus IMHO. Many people will just ignore what is written in the Slack channel and you lose the…

> 30-60 secs per person probably In my experience with a handful of teams so far, this has never consistently happened. There are always a few people (if not most of the team) that seem to not be able to be succinct. And many times, the standup turns into a back and forth between 2 or 3 members on a topic that's unrelated to what the rest of the members are doing and therefore a waste of their time. And most of the t…

Someone needs to say “parking lot” and move on. A bit of agenda control helps the team. You can always multitask when you’re on Zoom.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#34

Post by lifeplusplus »

yes, we would all post 3 lines in stand up channel by 1pm. It was much easier to easy to scan and see what's everyone is upto. Morning is the worst time to have dozen people talk about their irrelevant problems that you have no idea, interest or skills in. If there is an issue that requires team input we would just setup 4pm meeting for selected team members/experts to join and give their thoughts. Mgmt would never understand this, but fewer meetings and more productivity.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#35

Post by lifeplusplus »

adizam wrote: post #23
faangiq wrote: post #22

Yes, this is obviously more efficient. And hence contrary to the purpose of daily stand ups which is to waste everyone’s time to make the manager feel empowered and remind the slaves who owns them.

Yikes. Who hurt you?

Yikes, who hurt you? scrum master and scrum in general is the biggest bullshit jobs out there. More useless than a person holding doors and the door is automatic.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#36

Post by lifeplusplus »

lifeplusplus wrote: post #34

yes, we would all post 3 lines in stand up channel by 1pm. It was much easier to easy to scan and see what's everyone is upto. Morning is the worst time to have dozen people talk about their irrelevant problems that you have no idea, interest or skills in. If there is an issue that requires team input we would just setup 4pm meeting for selected team members/experts to join and give their thoughts. Mgmt would never u…

I forgot the history look up thing, it really helps out when you wanna remember who was working on the feature xyz.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#37

Post by lifeplusplus »

jrib wrote: post #15

Yes. Both times there was zero value in them. People won't read them. Daily stand-ups provide zero value in my opinion, asynchronous or not. If one has a blocker then it should be raised to the team in slack/email as soon as you realize you need help from the team. Waiting until daily stand-up doesn't seem sensible to me. Paying attention to conversations the team is having in slack, the ticket tracker and pull reque…

I feel if your team has more than 6 members standup is anti pattern at that point

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#38

Post by lifeplusplus »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #27
jrib wrote: post #15

Yes. Both times there was zero value in them. People won't read them. Daily stand-ups provide zero value in my opinion, asynchronous or not. If one has a blocker then it should be raised to the team in slack/email as soon as you realize you need help from the team. Waiting until daily stand-up doesn't seem sensible to me. Paying attention to conversations the team is having in slack, the ticket tracker and pull reque…

> If one has a blocker then it should be raised to the team in slack/email as soon as you realize you need help from the team. Waiting until daily stand-up doesn't seem sensible to me. The point of the daily stand-up is honestly more for identifying when people are struggling but not reaching out for help. A lot of people have a lone wolf attitude towards work even if they have a team so spotting when someone is avoi…

doesn't matter what the point is, 5/5 companies i've worked at it's simply repeat what's already visible on trello/jira board to people who can't care less. Every time hated hearing scrum master talk on and on about random stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#39

Post by acaz »

We didn't use slack unfortunatly, we had Zoom meetings planned every day for 15 minutes and our manager would make us go round table to discuss our ongoing projects and challenges etc.. it was very interesting since our small team were all working on very different problems, we could all try to focus for 2 minutes to solve a problem all together as a sort of team blitz. Sometimes it worked marvels.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been in a team that did “daily standups” asynchronously?

#40

Post by 1123581321 »

theonething wrote: post #29
osivertsson wrote: post #5

I have done that a few times and I feel the value drops to almost zero, or in some instances even negative, by doing this. Standups should be short hence do them standing with no digital screens around and team-size is optimally ~5. 30-60 secs per person probably. Writing a line on Slack spreads them out and takes away more focus IMHO. Many people will just ignore what is written in the Slack channel and you lose the…

> 30-60 secs per person probably In my experience with a handful of teams so far, this has never consistently happened. There are always a few people (if not most of the team) that seem to not be able to be succinct. And many times, the standup turns into a back and forth between 2 or 3 members on a topic that's unrelated to what the rest of the members are doing and therefore a waste of their time. And most of the t…

Someone needs to say something to those people so they know to speed it up and table discussions. Ideally peers would say it, not a manager, as it’s the devs’ meeting.

If you keep noticing this wherever you go, you should be the one to say it.

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