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Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

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Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#101

Post by valcker »

Yes, they do but it depends on the context. In my previous company (web agency) they were solving several issues at the same time:

- Project Manager (Proxy Product Owner) is communicating with the client on a daily basis and is getting some important updates about the progress of the Sprint;

- if there are some unexpected developments (for example, some User Stories appeared to be more complex) the Team and the PO can make a decision about it together, discuss various options, etc;

- the distributed team has a chance to see each other (we were encouraging video calls via Google Meet).

However, there are some certain rules which should be followed in order to make Daily Scrums effective:

- video (or at least audio) conferences for distributed teams – it can actually be slower to have this meeting via Slack;

- they must be timeboxed (15 minutes max);

- stay pragmatic about what you are discussing and ask the feedback of your team about it.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#102

Post by detaro »

mattmanser wrote: post #98
detaro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your standup meeting is "stand in front of the middle manager", you're doing it wrong(tm). As with all things "agile", many places love the labels, don't understand the ideas. In my (limited) experience, standup meeting involving leaders only work if the leader is clearly part of the team (and e.g. the pressure to get things done comes from outside). Of course, that doesn't help you if you're stuck in an organizat…

It doesn't matter if it's a manager or your peers, you shouldn't have to justify your work every single day. It's childish and immature and if you for some reason need to do it to be able to communicate, learn how to communicate properly, don't foist your miserable way of working on others.

Why does a standup have to be "justifing your work" (it's not supposed to be), but other communication about status not?

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#103

Post by JohnFen »

In my experience, daily scrums are without value. A well-functioning team already knows what everyone else is working on, what problems they're having, and etc.

If a team isn't well-functioning, then daily scrums could have some value -- but I think a better approach would be to fix the team.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#104

Post by ses1984 »

rumanator wrote: post #62
ses1984 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grievances should relate to a ticket on the board, if not then make a ticket for it, if not that then is the grievance important?

> Grievances should relate to a ticket on the board, if not then make a ticket for it, if not that then is the grievance important? That mindset is precisely the reason why these meetings are important, because these grievances might not necessarily reflect or deserve a ticket. They might be nothing or they might be something. What's important is that these meetings create a space where they can safely be addressed w…

This stuff goes in a retrospective. Airing of non specific grievances, therapy, etc. A scrum should be as short as possible.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#105

Post by djKianoosh »

TomMarius wrote: post #99
djKianoosh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because government project? although I imagine this happens in non-gov settings too, this is just my experience. Here's the reason: managers are so spread thin that they don't want to be in 5-10 standups all morning, so they combine around organizational structures rather than product(s)/deliverable(s). Another case of the software delivery matching org structure...

Of course the next question in line is "why is a manager involved in the standup?" > because government project? although I imagine this happens in non-gov settings too, this is just my experience. Why not split into smaller work groups? What's the advantage of 20 person teams?

organically this is what happens to actually get things done. but mind you, these small work groups are successful despite the large standups. life finds a way...

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#106

Post by mattmanser »

detaro wrote: post #102
mattmanser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if it's a manager or your peers, you shouldn't have to justify your work every single day. It's childish and immature and if you for some reason need to do it to be able to communicate, learn how to communicate properly, don't foist your miserable way of working on others.

Why does a standup have to be "justifing your work" (it's not supposed to be), but other communication about status not?

The very article linked shows the 3 questions.

"What did you do yesterday".

How is that not a loaded question?

JUSTIFY YOUR EXISTENCE. Every day.

Anyone encouraging standups is just contributing to the poor mental health of programmers.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#107

Post by detaro »

mattmanser wrote: post #106
detaro wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a standup have to be "justifing your work" (it's not supposed to be), but other communication about status not?

The very article linked shows the 3 questions. "What did you do yesterday". How is that not a loaded question? JUSTIFY YOUR EXISTENCE. Every day. Anyone encouraging standups is just contributing to the poor mental health of programmers.

When I tell my team what progress I made yesterday, that's not to justify my existence, it is so they know what has and what hasn't happened. Which is why the among equals, not towards a manager, bit is important.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#108

Post by lowercased »

seer wrote: post #96
lowercased wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd see a comment from a coworker on your PR and be like "argh who is this guys think he is! He's totally wrong" but if you can talk with him about it in video it becomes a lot less confrontational. You can apologise and be apologised to. Unless that doesn't happen. Perhaps he digs in his heels that he's "right" when he's demonstrably wrong? Or 'he' is the team lead, and it doesn't matter whether he's right or wr…

Well one thing that "How to win friends and Influence People", "Never split the difference" and "Non Violent Communication" in general has thought me is that it's very hard to "convince someone you're right". Dealing with people successfully to win them to your cause is a very hard skill to master, one that I'm struggling with myself. A better strategy I think is to try to get emotionally in sync with the other perso…

> It requires enormous emotional courage to admit someone's right before a lot of people, so we hardly every do it.

I've got a couple of current situations where... the other person is not wrong (charitably "right"), but the timing and prioritization is poor. Or, they may be 'right' but for wrong or bad reasoning. (yes, doing "foo" in the code is good because is helps with code readability, but no, it doesn't bestow another layer of security to the project, and no, it's not a 'performance boost').

These are even harder situations to deal with, because, again, technically, the idea being presented isn't "wrong" or "bad" in an absolute sense, just... strategically, it a step in a demonstrably bad direction wrt to project progression and hitting deadlines.

> or "other business consideration that we're not privy to" is another.

I've been on teams of up to 50 people - divided in to multiple smaller teams - company in the hundreds of employees. Yes, there may be reasonings that I'm not privy to - completely understandable (expected). I've been on teams of 3-4, talking to an end client multiple times per week about goals/deadlines/etc. There should not be any reason for info siloing with respect to anything at that level (save, perhaps, financial considerations like salaries, contract amounts, etc).

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#109

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mattmanser wrote: post #106
detaro wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a standup have to be "justifing your work" (it's not supposed to be), but other communication about status not?

The very article linked shows the 3 questions. "What did you do yesterday". How is that not a loaded question? JUSTIFY YOUR EXISTENCE. Every day. Anyone encouraging standups is just contributing to the poor mental health of programmers.

That can become "justify your existence", but it doesn't have to. What you did yesterday can actually be relevant information to your coworkers.

It sounds like either your work culture is somewhat toxic, or else you are rather defensive.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#110

Post by drewcoo »

andy_boot wrote: post #36
alfonsodev wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, I found that if you go for the Round Robin format, often, people are just thinking about what are they going to say next, and how to make it sound like actual valuable work rather than listen to the colleagues. It gets akward when some people get a lot done (apparently) and others not, also not everyone knows how to "sell" their work, and IMO it can create weird dynamics. Walking the board is much…

I also noticed this. We came up with a variant to fix this. You have to say what the next person in the circle said they'd do yesterday before your talk. This forced everyone to pay more attention as you don't know who would be standing next to you tomorrow. It wasn't easy to do but I think it did make people more aware of what was going on.

Why is this voted down? Stand-ups are supposed to be about increased team cohesiveness and this helped their team achieve that.
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