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Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

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Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#31

Post by talmi »

rockostrich wrote: post #17
recroad wrote: post #8

Tried similar tools and ad-hoc processes during the pandemic. None worked as effectively as turning your camera's on and walking the board for 15 minutes. In fact, the chance of miscommunication increased when we introduced tooling like this. Though agile has been bastardized and gotten a bad rep, it's core values of "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and principles like "The most efficient and e…

Yea, same here both as a manager and an IC. I definitely see the value with async stand-ups. A daily slack reminder just doesn't cut it there for most teams. But if you have a time where everyone can meet for 15 minutes then just talking for 10-15 minutes (my team has 30 minutes blocked off but we rarely hit that unless there's some kind of more in-depth discussion that arises) is invaluable.

We support both live meetings and async syncs and allow teams to go back and forth between the two formats as needed while maintaining context from one day to the next

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#32

Post by jacknews »

joegahona wrote: post #30
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Progress can be reported asynchronously. Progress shouldn't even need to be reported; it should be obvious from the board, when it comes to communicating upwards. And IMO that's only relevant to the scrum master (who needs to ensure everything is going smoothly) and maybe the product owner; above the PO level, if they care about progress during a sprint they're paid too much. The level above PO should only care abo…

I've had better success with face-to-face standups. In my experience, "progress should be obvious from the board" and async "standups" have been far less effective than actual standups. Lots of engineers are introverted and hate writing; a good product manager can extract context and blockers via voice (without making it feel like a pop quiz or a blame game) that a shy engineer might be hesitant to broadcast in writi…

"manager can extract context and blockers via voice"

lol. Which agile principle is this?

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#33

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I really like the idea. It's easy to tell people what they're supposed to do, but people need help to stick to the plan. Automated guiderails are a great way to smoothly enforce a process.

Some things I'd suggest based on the demo:

- A splash page right before the stand-up begins to remind people to resist the urge to explain in detail what they did; two sentences per item is more than enough. If a question can't be answered in two sentences, it should immediately become a Team Topic.

- A big countdown timer that gets more red and shakes as time goes on, both for each individual person, and for how long the whole standup is taking.

- Some buttons to create a Jira item, Zoom meeting, etc from a Team Topic, and share the link to it.

- A help screen with the most important takeaways about stand-ups, like the fact that it should not be run by a product owner or manager, that it is to serve the sprint goal, etc.

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#34

Post by talmi »

vertis wrote: post #24

Firstly, congrats on launching. Hard work is hard. I don't want to be negative on your launch day, but at the same time feedback is important. 1. I couldn't see myself or the many agile/lean teams I've been part of using this. I don't feel enough of a burden when walking the board for this to be worth the money. 2. A user in spinach.io costs effectively the same amount as a user in Slack, the difference is that I'm g…

Thanks for the feedback, that's what we're looking for! The way we built the prep experience leverages previous tasks and goals and leverages our Jira integration which allows users to complete it in 1-2 minutes. The time saving you get by the whole team doing it is in many cases 10-20 minutes a day so well worth it. We're working on more features which leverage our Jira integration so eventually you'll be able to do everything you need during standup directly from Spinach in Zoom/Meet/Teams without having to use another app and/or screen share

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#35

Post by joegahona »

jacknews wrote: post #32
joegahona wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had better success with face-to-face standups. In my experience, "progress should be obvious from the board" and async "standups" have been far less effective than actual standups. Lots of engineers are introverted and hate writing; a good product manager can extract context and blockers via voice (without making it feel like a pop quiz or a blame game) that a shy engineer might be hesitant to broadcast in writi…

"manager can extract context and blockers via voice" lol. Which agile principle is this?

> The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#36

Post by talmi »

mchusma wrote: post #27
talmi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback We plan to integrate with Teams and for now teams running their standups on Teams use our web app. We do support SSO, just need to set it up per customer which is why we ask folks to reach out for the enterprise tier.

As a user, I also hate non-transparent pricing and call for sales. I also dont buy many things if I can't see transparent pricing. BUT as a 2x SAAS business I found that this absolutely worked. Make them call. I hate that it works. I have tried irrationally hard to make transparent pricing work for larger customers, and failed. I don't think it's a law of nature, and in some cases it can work. But generally, talk to…

Thanks for this And of course anyone can try it out first with no need to talk to us

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#37

Post by talmi »

majikandy wrote: post #18
DocTomoe wrote: post #4

Hm, from a purely agile standpoint: This seems to reduce daily stand-ups to status report meetings (and then, why have a stand-up at all?). Does a stand-up that is over in 5 minutes (and has 10-15 minutes of prep time) really bring value to anyone but a team lead?

Yesterday, today, blockers… already feels like a relic from the past.

We're working on enabling dynamic prompts so teams can customize. What's your standup format?

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#38

Post by talmi »

gtsteve wrote: post #29

My company is a small business but we require Okta SSO for every app. What is the reasoning behind SSO being an enterprise feature (aside from the fact that most SaaS apps do that)? This is a blocker to us using many SaaS products because the enterprise tier is always very expensive. I think TeamRetro got it right with SAML support at the first paid tier, we started with a smaller plan and stepped it up as we grew. S…

The simple reason is that it requires setup on our side. Do you see SSO as a blocker to trying? What we've seen teams do in most cases is use the free tier with email signup and try it out for a bit, once they like it and want to upgrade they contact us to upgrade and set up SSO.

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#39

Post by adave »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13
recroad wrote: post #8

Tried similar tools and ad-hoc processes during the pandemic. None worked as effectively as turning your camera's on and walking the board for 15 minutes. In fact, the chance of miscommunication increased when we introduced tooling like this. Though agile has been bastardized and gotten a bad rep, it's core values of "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and principles like "The most efficient and e…

To add, the stand-up loses its value if it becomes rote; people will tune out or wait for their turn to speak. One trick we're using is that the order is always random, and whoever's turn it is gets to pick who is next. Ideally you pick the one who is not paying attention.

Haha i bet people hate the person that introduced it. However if you use a randomizer it might be ok.

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#40

Post by talmi »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #33

I really like the idea. It's easy to tell people what they're supposed to do, but people need help to stick to the plan. Automated guiderails are a great way to smoothly enforce a process. Some things I'd suggest based on the demo: - A splash page right before the stand-up begins to remind people to resist the urge to explain in detail what they did; two sentences per item is more than enough. If a question can't be…

This is great, thanks! We actually experimented with a countdown timer but folks found it too stressful :)
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