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Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

blog.valuemotive.com

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Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#11

Post by carwyn »

jpkeisala wrote: post #5

> Another variation would be to do the daily on Slack which can even be asynchronous. That is exactly what I do. Every morning answer 3 things in Slack. It is also good way to say "Good morning, now I start to work on X, yesterday I did Z and I need some help on Y.

Regular updates on the bug/task tracking systems together with notification and Q&A on a more stream based async system like Slack work well for us. Lack of activity is usually a sign of an issue, usually someone being stuck, a bit down or on a roll. All need a check-in, even the on-a-roll person as sometimes they get carried away without letting people know about changes. We tend to have weekly in-person synchronisations meetings.

This does really vary hugely from team to team and even project to project though. I fear "agile" methods have forgotten the meaning of the word they are based on at times. Regular re-factoring also applies to development and operational models I find.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#12

Post by loa_in_ »

einpoklum wrote: post #3

This kind of daily meetings make me feel like I'm standing trial for my crimes. Especially if I've had a bad/down/unproductive day, which happens. Maybe it's better when you take away the power relations. And reduce the frequency during non-critical periods.

I skipped some meetings randomly (I was busy on the phone), so that's the escape hatch. But alternatively one might argue that if it's mandatory nobody will come.

I don't have a good argument for the second part, except that I'd attend it to be up to date whenever I could.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#13

Post by philjr »

einpoklum wrote: post #3

This kind of daily meetings make me feel like I'm standing trial for my crimes. Especially if I've had a bad/down/unproductive day, which happens. Maybe it's better when you take away the power relations. And reduce the frequency during non-critical periods.

My 2c - the key is that the focus should be on delivery and not some justification for the work you did yesterday. The idea being that you are standing up looking at the work in front of you and the TEAM itself should be focused on how to move things across the board (ie delivering it to whatever definition of done makes sense for you)

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#14

Post by Yizahi »

I don't like or dislike daily meetings much personally, but I think they are needed - mainly for scrum master and PO. Daily can't be replaced realistically with bug tracker dashboard because 80% of daily time is not bug status discussion but let's say mostly human problems. Also I believe there is zero correlation between success of the project as a whole and a need for daily, none at all. People suggest async text in chat but eventually harder and more detailed issues will raise a need to actually talk and while it will save 20 minutes time of each participant who now don't have to listen to other people's issues it will also isolate people from potentially useful information and prevent them to suggest their ideas or ask for clarification , basically limiting in-team collaboration.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#15

Post by bitL »

seer wrote: post #6

I think they are worth it for remote teams. Most of the work comms can be easily done in slack, but there’s definitely a benefit of making people talk to each other and express emotions at least once a day. Normal offices accomplish that with water cooler talk and informal chatter, but you miss on that with remote teams. There might be a better way to solve the “loosing of esprit de corps” thing but dailies are the e…

Why not weekly? Or twice a week? Advantage of remote is that you can prioritize incoming information and everybody is onboard with asynchronous communication by default.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#16

Post by hugg »

Personally, I like the slack message standup over the meeting, but that's mainly because I'm a terrible listener, at least with text I can go back and see what a certain person has decided to mention. I also feel like it's easier to mention someone that I might need help from during the day

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#17

Post by celticmusic »

petetnt wrote: post #10

I see the value in daily communication and the general topics (yesterday, today, blockers) of the dailies, but at the same time the daily standups show how the in general much of the modern work and communication has moved to asynchronous methods but the text book example still requires the events to happen in a synchronous way (eg. standup at 9 am) which obviously causes issues. Then you move forward to move say the…

I know, right? How would two consenting adults ever work together to solve problems by communicating? Thankfully we have them stand up daily, without which they'd both just continually walk into the wall like lemmings.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#18

Post by rumanator »

kozhevnikov wrote: post #7

Daily stand-ups have two formats, one is Round Robin that has origins in Scrum, other is Walk the Board that is more Kanban. I highly recommend you switching from "did yesterday/do today" to "walking the board" as it is less about checking what each employee delivered in a day but rather what the team can do to move tickets through the board. It is also more inclusive allowing quiet/introverted/non-native English spe…

It should be noted that the "round robin" format has an important aspect which is to enable each team member to air his/her personal grievances regarding anything related to the project.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#19

Post by dd82 »

For me, they are. More so in my current role with a fully remote company. All calls are video calls, with RingCentral, Slack or Google Meet. We get to see each other face to face, get some social time and chit-chat a few minutes before diving into the standup.

Other teams do async standup via Slack, via Standup Alice. It seems to work for them.

I also really like the addition of an "open forum" in my team. Is there anything you've heard from other teams that will probably have an impact on this sprint's tickets or ones in the queue for the next one? Its also a good time for the PMs to relate any relevant conversations had with other PMs that we should know about.

The real key to this is there's no power play involved, and to have a good sense of scope about what's appropriate to bring up and what isn't. We're also a hybrid core/product team, so regular checkins are beneficial overall.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#20

Post by mattmanser »

Yizahi wrote: post #14

I don't like or dislike daily meetings much personally, but I think they are needed - mainly for scrum master and PO. Daily can't be replaced realistically with bug tracker dashboard because 80% of daily time is not bug status discussion but let's say mostly human problems. Also I believe there is zero correlation between success of the project as a whole and a need for daily, none at all. People suggest async text i…

I think they are needed - mainly for scrum master and PO...[but] there is zero correlation between success of the project as a whole and a need for daily

So, basically, what you're really saying is they're not needed and you don't need scrum masters or POs.

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