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

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121–130 of 188 posts

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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a bona-fide, certified, rarified SCRUM-MASTER here (respect mah authoritay), I just have to say - does anyone really think a standup is a 'collaborative' meeting? It's a check-in meeting! If you weren't productive yesterday, just say so - as long as you are generally keeping your commitments and shipping your features on time, it's fine. If you are behind, you can verbalize it - and if it makes sense, it makes sen…

A check-in meeting is still a collaboration tool (the phrase I used), so... yes? But I get the sense you're using these words differently from their normal meaning, so it's possible that in some jargon-sense they're not, because a check-in meeting can't be a collaboration tool because those have strictly exclusionary definitions, or something. But under ordinary usage of the terms, yes, sure, a check-in meeting's pro…

Oof, half hour stand-ups.

I see what you are saying though, I think my definition of 'collaboration' didn't immediately translate into your head. When I think of check-in, I just think of taking attendance. Who is at work today? In two or three sentences, what are you working on today? This way, the PM knows who has a little bit more slack in their day, and who can be assigned to triage a bug that pops out of nowhere, for example. I work at a smaller company, where product engineering goes hand in hand with fixing bugs. They aren't different teams.

'Collaboration' implies some sort of positive activity, that creates or generates something, whereas I think of a standup as simple a check-in exercise that provides a mechanism for people to notify someone 'hey, I need to discuss this with you, let's stay on after the call'.

My definitions are my own though, and probably pretty weird. I've tried to internalize the spirit of Agile, and through that internalization my main conclusion with a standup is that it's just a way to check in, and springboard into deeper triage conversations while allowing product management to understand what is being worked on.

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

#123
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). B…

A large part of Agile, at least from what I remember in my ScrumMaster training, is to recognize reality. You estimated that you would do x amount of work. You only did y. Or, you did x + z - wow, you are a great performer. You should verbalize your success more often. A part of confronting reality, is confronting the prospect of under-performing employees. I think your 'ideology' is blinding you a little bit OP, at…

The selective pressures of your model reward dishonesty (under promise over deliver / make estimates as high as possible to mitigate downside and reduce pressure). Why is that making your team better?

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

#126
Congrats on the launch! As a user of dozens of Slack apps, and a lover of async work, I encourage as much competition in this space as possible.

I don’t think my company would be a fit for this, as we’ve successfully killed all internal meetings, including stand ups. We do daily checkins, but that looks like a secondary function of spinach, and one solved by other Slack apps.

I’m unsure if you plan on getting into the async space and providing more tooling around that, but if you do, I’d be all ears. There are a lot of opportunities to improve async workflows through tools.

Regardless, best of luck!

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

#127
post #9

Is this what agile/scrum is now? I feel burned out just reading it. IMHO the 'standup' (keep them on their toes!) was always suspect if it was just a PM 'what have you done lately' meeting. Progress can be reported asynchronously. IMHO the point of having the team together daily is to raise exceptions/problems/blockers/whatever to the rest of the team, and perhaps co-ordinate the rest of the day.

> 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…

Yeah progress is an output from your tools imo. We have a single channel in our Slack that has GitHub, Linear, and Notion events piped into it. You’d think it’d become a mess, but we encourage people to add keywords to Slack so they get notified when things they want/need to read pop up. So far it’s worked great for a small team (5 people).

We still do checkins, but that hooks into Linear as well, so creating a checkin is as easy as clicking a button.

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

#129
post #66
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…

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…

I feel sad for your teams. I mean this with respect but you should consider management training.

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

#130

Congrats on the launch! As a user of dozens of Slack apps, and a lover of async work, I encourage as much competition in this space as possible. I don’t think my company would be a fit for this, as we’ve successfully killed all internal meetings, including stand ups. We do daily checkins, but that looks like a secondary function of spinach, and one solved by other Slack apps. I’m unsure if you plan on getting into th…

We already support async! Please give it a try and tell us what you think
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