You say you're YC W22 - when did you apply and when did you get interviewed, and approved? I thought submissions were closed only recently.
Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
71–80 of 188 posts
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#72Hm, 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.
Here’s something I just started thinking about: what if you took out the Yesterday and Today bits from the stand up and just made it about Blockers+Issues… ?
The Yesterday and Today bits seem to unavoidably bias stand ups into status meetings.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#73Omg why can’t we just get rid of the whole agile crap and communicate when there are meaningful things to be communicated, since agile took place I’ve been hating software development more and more, it’s just an endless flow of stuff you need to hear and don’t give a shit about
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#74Earlier 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…
>> Lots of engineers are introverted and hate writing
I think it’s the time that introverts start going to a therapist to get it fixed, because they’re slowly getting to the top of my most hated bunch of people with this expectation that the whole world need to be put in a passive and painful misery to accommodate them
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sounds toxic-ish! Why pick on someone who isn't paying attention?
It doesn't have to be toxic. If the team gets along well, it's all a bit of fun.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#76Firstly, 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…
As an EM, I use documented standups to keep track of how long and when people work on tasks. When a person is under performing, this document is invaluable reference. When a person is exceeding expectations, this document helps me write their promo doc. This could could be useful to manage that data better, but currently I use a Google Doc sheet. That being said, I couldn't justify the cost of this tool to my manager…
We're actually coming at it from the other side -- we built it to take the pain out of standup and encourage more meaningful communication. It's definitely not designed as a people management tool.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#77Why is this called "Spinach"? Is it a play off of Popeye the Sailor Man?
Nobody likes spinach but you eat it because it's good for you. Interpret that as you will for standups...
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#78This is great. We faced similar challenges as our team grew.
Since our organization was already on MS Teams, we designated one person on each team to transcribe each standup into a channel on Teams.
The feedback I've seen on this thread about taking too much effort for a dev each day is odd to me. Just as it's not wise to dive head-first into code before understanding problem, I think spending 5-10 minutes planning out your day is cheap; I'm already paying it, I'll just paste that into Spinach.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#79Firstly, 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…
As an EM, I use documented standups to keep track of how long and when people work on tasks. When a person is under performing, this document is invaluable reference. When a person is exceeding expectations, this document helps me write their promo doc. This could could be useful to manage that data better, but currently I use a Google Doc sheet. That being said, I couldn't justify the cost of this tool to my manager…
It's disappointing that standups are used in this way. I don't know you and I don't know your team but this kind of approach to standups is probably wrecking your standups.
The standup has it's roots in the agile manifesto[0] (gross simplification). Specifically "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". The coming together every day for just a few minutes is an opportunity to ask for help (blockers).
Both the standup and to an even greater extent the retrospective are exercises in trust. I agree to show weakness and tell you and the team when I'm struggling with a task, or when things aren't going well, seeking continuous improvement. You agree not to use that against me.
The sooner roadblocks and problems are discovered the less likely they are to become larger problems. This is one of the fundamental benefits of a standup. But this requires trust. Recording and documenting for the purposes of performance management is probably the number one way of destroying that trust.
All of this means they're a very fragile beast. Prone to becoming exercises is puffery, or even worse a list of cards being worked on that you could just as easily get from the wall/Jira/trello.
The team also succeeds or fails together, a much better way of dealing with employees that are struggling is to use pairing (sparingly) to ensure that anyone blocked on a task doesn't face it alone. Some things are just hard. I've got 20+ years of programming under my belt and I still manage to struggle at times.
I've got the experience to work through this and ask for help where needed, but the earlier you are in your career the more imposter syndrome makes it desirable to crawl into a hole rather than ask for help. Standup in a great team helps break down those barriers. But only if a very fragile trust is maintained.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#80My 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.
It's not a blocker to trying but I equate "enterprise" with $expensive so it does certainly put me off, as I'd need to enter into negotiations that I don't really have time for in order to comply with our policies. I also find often when I begin this conversation there is a set price that is inflexible and a minimum spend way in excess of what we need, and I usually end up just looking at another product.
I appreciate you have technical limitations at present but consider adding a SSO administration UI to your backlog - you can certainly set it up so it's all managed in the software. It is a bit more of a technical problem when it goes wrong, so that justifies an increased price tag for the support. I don't expect anything for free but I don't want to have to talk to someone to get it.