Standups are Poisonous
garethrees.co.uk
Standups are Poisonous
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Re: Standups are Poisonous
#2What you are saying here is: your standups are poisonous. Ours on a 8 man team only take 10 minutes on average, and we have no team lead. They don't all have to be, if yours are, change them.
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#3What you are saying here is: your standups are poisonous. Ours on a 8 man team only take 10 minutes on average, and we have no team lead. They don't all have to be, if yours are, change them.
Also, instead of fixing the stand up, his solution is to generate a whole bunch of crappy paperwork for the team lead (email, pdf stored somewhere, blah blah).
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#4It sounds to me like you are doing your standups wrong. The job of the facilitator (in your case, the team leader) should be to keep things moving, and ensure that you aren't taking 30 minutes.
The most important thing to get out of the meeting, IMHO, is challenges, as status should be evident by the location of your story tickets. The problem with providing an environment where "Others can skim-read or ignore." is that they often will, and peer challenges can easily go unresolved without adequate feedback.
You are standing for a reason - its uncomfortable (for those of us who sit all day). Your facilitator should be roping in the conversation (and if not you need to replace them - rotating among team members often works). If that doesn't work, then your teams are likely too large.
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#5I am pretty strongly against micromanagement and process-for-authority's-sake. However, I think Standup is a necessary evil. It sucks. But it just might suck less than the alternative, which is opacity (which gives power to management). Standups deserve some kind of timer, though. One minute per person, and split the standup if it gets beyond 10-15 people. Everyone should also have the right to opt-out.
Here's why Standups can be powerful and, actually, a bit subversive. They create Common Knowledge (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic) ) of what you are doing. That's different from shared knowledge. Shared knowledge means everyone knows it. Common knowledge means everyone knows everyone knows it (and, recursively, everyone knows everyone knows everyone knows, and so on...). Bob knows you are getting useful work done. So does Tom, your boss. But, thanks to Standup, Tom also knows that Bob knows you are getting your work done. At least in theory, this limits Tom in his ability to isolate, disempower, disparage and ultimately create cause to fire you. Standups move authority away from managerial hands. They're not intended toward that effect, but if they work well, that is something they accomplish.
(Of course, in a closed-allocation company, your boss can just give you impossible or extremely boring work if he wants to flush you out.)
It also needs to be made clear and constitutional that the daily standup is the only status-reporting overhead, except in a production crisis. If there's Daily Standup and your boss gets to interrupt you regularly with status pings (which is a show of power; he probably won't even remember that he asked you, just like people look at their watches but forget to read the time) then you're just getting screwed.
Also, I agree that standup before 10:00 or after 4:00 is just shitty. I'm usually up at 6:00 am, but the idea that you have to have the same schedule as the boss to be a worthwhile human being is just garbage.
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#6What you are saying here is: your standups are poisonous. Ours on a 8 man team only take 10 minutes on average, and we have no team lead. They don't all have to be, if yours are, change them.
+1 Our 6 man team takes also 10 minutes the most. Everybody knows from previous work experience how annoying long meetings are. So we really just talk what everybody is going to do roughly for the upcoming week and coordinate if somebody needs to talk to another team-member for a bit longer.
So everybody knows what's going on, but the details are discussed separately.
It seems like in his poisonous meetings there is too much detail for everybody.
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#7This guy is seriously suggesting replacing stand-ups with management and paperwork? There's something very wrong here, but that was already clear from the objections.
"30 minutes", "action points", "notes", "weekly update"?
Seriously, I know that "you're not doing it right" is the standard lame excuse from Scrum-evangelists, but this paints a picture of doing pretty much the opposite of Scrum.
Especially the emphasis placed on the "weekly update" is a big red flag, suggesting this team is doing something that isn't even close to being Agile. Agile and Scrum are supposed to be about delivering working software, and in the case of Scrum it's strictly time boxed. Weekly updates suggest micro-management and/or not delivering anything shippable.
Only the 10:00 versus flex time is a genuine issue. We have a very simple solution for that: if you can't be there, mail it in (or use HipChat). Yes, this also applies to people who start early and are deep in the zone by 10am. It's not supposed to be a two-way conversation anyway, just quickly syncing up.
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#8My team right now has around 30 members in the sprint. I've checked with some of the experienced Scrum master in my company, the ideal member is around 4 - 6 person. Even having 7th member's slow things down in his experience. And this is not on just the standups, it applies to daily operations as well.
My take here is that we should have much smaller teams and if possible have Scrum of Scrums to handle bigger project. However, I know that this might not be possible for some since some project tends not to have a good demarcation on what should be in which teams.
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#9Who's dictating 10 o'clock? Standups can be e.g. just before or after lunch, or in the afternoon. The team should be able to agree on a time that works for everyone. And if that really is impossible, then use Skype or similar to include people who are still at home.
A six person team should be able to be done in less than 10 minutes. If someone gets off topic or rants on about details, stop them, and perhaps suggest a meeting afterwords.
You solution totally ruins the dynamics of the standup.
Re: Standups are Poisonous
#10Our Weekdone (http://weekdone.com/) service is meant exactly for what you propose, although more on a weekly paradigm. Many of our users have switched from regular standup meetings to an online weekly process. And even if you do the meetings, distributing plans, progress and problems ahead to the whole team can be a huge timesaver.
We currently have only daily progress input via e-mail at Weekdone, but are looking at providing daily e-mail summaries as well.
Appreciate any input how to make a process like that better in a web/e-mail/mobile service.