Another 10 direct emails alonng with cross-posts and threaded conversations is exactly what I don't need to get out of a stand-up.
An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#12when the daily, morning status meeting started being referred toas 'the stand-up', concepts got blurred.
a meeting is held as a stand-up in order to encourage brevity.
so the poster is looking for alternatives to morning status meetings, not stand-up meetings.
stand-up meetings are just fine. thankyouverymuch
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#13Email is absolutely fine. Just learn to write succinctly.
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#14> Stand-ups are great but they have some major flaws: they're synchronous, everyone needs to be in the room (or on the phone), and often after the meeting much of the content is lost That pretty much nails it. I'll admit though I hate standups. Any value it has as a concept is completely lost in its practice.
We do standups several times per day, one on one with the people we need to talk to. It's called conversation.
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#15Now on the one hand, we do mail-ins as well whenever someone can't make it to the stand-up, especially since any team member can work from home whenever they like. Plus our starting time is loosely defined as "let's all try to be there around 10-ish", so some people are already in the flow since 8:30 by the time the last team member shows up.
However, every time someone proclaims to have found a better alternative for the stand-up, I always go looking for the "you-were-doing-it-wrong" red flag. One thing stand out:
"No need to take notes in a stand-up or bother someone with questions [...]"
Notes? Bothering someone with questions? These are hints that there was a dysfunctional stand-up in place to begin with, in which case it's hard to judge how well the alternative works.
In my experience, mailing in works fine as a workaround for situations where having a physical standup is impossible or disruptive, but certainly no equal alternative to spending a few minutes actually sharing information face to face with all the non-verbal high bandwidth communication that goes with it. One look, one gesture can say more than an entire email.
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#16I dunno... I feel like if I'm totally honest, there's a good chance I would wind up just ignoring 90% of those e-mails, or at least not reading them carefully enough. For me, I feel like the benefit of a stand-up is exactly that it forces everyone to pay attention and meet for 5 min, not just so that everything important gets communicated, but that everyone knows everyone else heard it. And people can ask important q…
When I notice that people have a habit of ignoring my emails, I instant-message them after I send the email. If that doesn't work, I call them. If that doesn't work I walk over to their desk. If they're not at their desk, or in another building, I email their boss and ask whether the person is taking a day off.
Believe it or not, people stopped ignoring my emails.
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#17Everything old is new again. Email status is a check-in method as old as, well, email. This works great if you have a reasonable number of people working largely on independent areas, or if your pace is slow enough to drive consensus through email. If you need to reach team consensus regularly and quickly, e.g. on architectural or design decisions, synchronous standups are still better, even virtual ones over IRC or…
Agreed. It depends a lot on the team and the project. Our team of six devs had stand-ups every 90 minutes all day every day for 9 months when were all touching the same app. It was appropriate and we got a lot done. When the nature of our work changed, we switched back to a daily stand-up.
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#18Everyone sending email status updates to everyone else daily is an alternative to stand-up meetings?
I mean, I guess it is.... it's in particular, an alternative that was very common before stand-ups were invented and became popular, which was judged ineffective and inefficient by those who invented stand up meetings. But, sure.
In other news, planning everything out in advance is an alternative to agile development.
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#19> Stand-ups are great but they have some major flaws: they're synchronous, everyone needs to be in the room (or on the phone), and often after the meeting much of the content is lost That pretty much nails it. I'll admit though I hate standups. Any value it has as a concept is completely lost in its practice.
We do standups several times per day, one on one with the people we need to talk to. It's called conversation.
Heh, no kidding.
Edit: Looks like this "conversation" idea may have jumped the shark too. Management consultants are already trying to horn in on this technique (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Art-Conversation-Neglected-Pleasure...). Pretty soon we'll need "conversation masters" and some sort of certification process.
Re: An Alternative to Stand-up Meetings
#20I dunno... I feel like if I'm totally honest, there's a good chance I would wind up just ignoring 90% of those e-mails, or at least not reading them carefully enough. For me, I feel like the benefit of a stand-up is exactly that it forces everyone to pay attention and meet for 5 min, not just so that everything important gets communicated, but that everyone knows everyone else heard it. And people can ask important q…
When I notice that people have a habit of ignoring my emails, I instant-message them after I send the email. If that doesn't work, I call them. If that doesn't work I walk over to their desk. If they're not at their desk, or in another building, I email their boss and ask whether the person is taking a day off. Believe it or not, people stopped ignoring my emails.
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