We used Spinach since early beta days and it was pretty helpful with running concise & effective morning standups.
a> We used Spinach since early beta days and it was pretty helpful with running concise & effective morning standups.
Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
131–140 of 188 posts
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#132I absolutely love it!
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Honest question: why is this bad?
If my estimates are padded to the point where I always complete what I commit to and my boss is happy with my output, what’s the problem? My boss gets value from being able to accurately convey estimates to clients, the client 9/10 gets the work done on time or maybe even gets a couple extra features completed in the same timeline, and I as the engineer, have a relaxed work environment, free of the stress of cramming every story point possible into 40 hours a week.
Seems like a win win win to me.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Honest question: why is this bad? If my estimates are padded to the point where I always complete what I commit to and my boss is happy with my output, what’s the problem? My boss gets value from being able to accurately convey estimates to clients, the client 9/10 gets the work done on time or maybe even gets a couple extra features completed in the same timeline, and I as the engineer, have a relaxed work environme…
This might be okay in isolation, but eventually as the entire team of engineers start to underdeliver, the team and company does get affected in terms of feature rollouts / velocity, and it's difficult to recover from it. People won't want to suddenly correct / do more work even if it's crucial, and they can point to their previous underestimated commitments and say that is a full week's worth of work. YMMV as with anything, but not knowing a team's true velocity does affect planning and sales.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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). B…
> The coming together every day for just a few minutes is an opportunity to ask for help (blockers).
The rest of your message about unblocking early seems to contradict your first statement of waiting until scrum to ask for help.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'm an EM as well and this is horrible, both from a personnel management standpoint but also just from the "understanding what the standup is for" standpoint. You should be using standups to hear what your teams' blockers are, then spend the rest of the day getting rid of those blockers.
I prefer to be told when blockers happen and not 12-24 hours later. There are many different types of management styles though...
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This strategy is set by my manager.
The only feedback I am seeing in this post is how standup should be used to report blocks. I encourage my team to message me when they have questions and not to wait until a sync meeting to report issues. We rarely discuss blockers because those are address in 1:1 or project focused meetings.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#138For me, the reasons I tried to push for doing our daily update on Slack (back in 2016 I think) were:
1. Enable asynchronous work (by that I mean that we should both be avoiding a context switch at a fixed time of the day + not discriminate anyone working from home).
2. In every team that I've been, I've found that during traditional "standups" I found that most attendant would think about their own update rather than listening to the current speaker, which totally defeats the purpose of this meeting (which I guess should be to sync as a team).
And so in the video demo, it seems very redundant to see each speaker describe what they already put in writing. Instead, if a face-to-face meeting is to be held in addition to a textual update, I would have expected the team to discuss any question they might have for their team mates which rises from the update they read _prior_ to the meeting.
P.S. In the video demo, the cut from Heather's update to the summary of what we've seen was kind of blatant, and I can only guess that any women who might watch this demo and have experienced being disregarded on meetings by a group of men, might feel uncomfortable. I'm not saying this is in any way represent the culture in your company, but having seen this in real life (and despite myself identifying as a man) I felt like it really stood out.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question: why is this bad? If my estimates are padded to the point where I always complete what I commit to and my boss is happy with my output, what’s the problem? My boss gets value from being able to accurately convey estimates to clients, the client 9/10 gets the work done on time or maybe even gets a couple extra features completed in the same timeline, and I as the engineer, have a relaxed work environme…
This might be okay in isolation, but eventually as the entire team of engineers start to underdeliver, the team and company does get affected in terms of feature rollouts / velocity, and it's difficult to recover from it. People won't want to suddenly correct / do more work even if it's crucial, and they can point to their previous underestimated commitments and say that is a full week's worth of work. YMMV as with a…
Parent said "boss is happy with output", there is no underdelivering here.
Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Something like…
1. Bit of banter. 2. Talk about aging cards/blockers 3. Talk about the cards on the board, from right to left. Since further right is most important. 3. Share things with each other that came up since last standup that you think is worth sharing. 4. Ask for help. Offer help. How can I help you get that card over the line? 5. Final bants.