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Daily standups should be async

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Re: Daily standups should be async

#121

Post by deckard1 »

alexbanks wrote: post #46
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my experience, async standups mean everyone posts their status and does not read any other status. That has been my experience, too. Going async sends a message that people don't need to care about what their team members are working on. That's a dream come true for the people who just want to pull Jira tickets out of the queue, finish them in isolation, and then collect a paycheck. However, it doesn't make for…

I'm _very_ disillusioned by blaming lots of software process as a bailout for bad devs. I dislike most software process (agile), but I think some of the processes defined by agile are mostly just branded common sense. Talk to your team. Give a shit about what they're doing. Care about your work. Care about your project. Sometimes heavily scrutinized, reasonable process doesn't need to be modified. Sometimes the devs…

> Care about your work. Care about your project.

I think this is the crux of many problems plaguing software development today.

Unless you're at a brand-spanking-new startup or have been handed the keys to an exciting greenfield project, you're going to be on a legacy project. Which means a combination of adding new features to a pile of cruft, or fixing bugs in that pile of cruft.

This is where it becomes problematic: no one stays at a company longer than a year or two. Industry compensation does not work in the favor of the person dedicating years to a single company and/or project. Which means there is a built in don't-give-a-shit factor to every software project today. Not that the rockstar coders of yesterday ever gave much of a crap of the quality of code they left in their wake, but industry incentives turn us all into code monkeys. And if you happen to be the guy or girl that cares and is staying at the company many years, you'll surely witness a parade of ladder climbers come and go and absolutely destroy the quality of your hard work and effort.

I could go on about title inflation, and the fact that only about 1 in 5 devs is, in my book, truly a senior today. But we're way off topic now.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#122

Post by sourcaustic »

The one thing that I like about daily "standups" (daily meetings rather) is to see my teammate's mug every morning for a brief moment, while taking my first sip of coffee, and that scintilla of a moment when we wish each other a good day, all smiling, as our heart fills with hope that today is gonna be that lovely day where we'll finally experience the flow, the apocryphal stream of uninterrupted productivity. That's what a perfect daily "standup" looks like to me. But sadly, someone always feels the need to tell us what they had to do yesterday in great details and what their plan is for today, as I nod mechanically and cluelessly zone out.

At some point I noticed that my teammates, including my manager, often are at least as clueless as me, especially when the verbiage becomes a bit too technical. I thought I'd do everyone a favor by simplifying things. So some time ago, shortly after the start of a sprint I tried a format that corresponds pretty much with what is generally understood from our little speeches, but said more directly: "well, I made some progress on that thing yesterday and I'll work a bit more on it today. That's about it." On the second standup of this, my manager asked that we have an impromptu demo that afternoon, which was really inconvenient, since instead of working on my branch, I now had to spend the morning preparing a presentation that he could understand. That's when I realized that daily standups aren't really designed to boost developers' productivity, but another tool that is easily misused by managers to give themselves the illusion of control.

Don't ask me what I think of scrum, it would rhyme.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#123

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

At my last remote job we had stand-up twice a week. It was a small team and we rarely had a reason to care what anyone else was working on. We didn't need stand-up at all.

At my current remote job we have DSU, but the format is simplified. Nobody has to say what they're working on because that's info you can lookup yourself on the JIRA board. The team lead/PM shares any important company info if applicable (usually 2 minutes long) then anyone that has blocking issues is free to speak up if they need help. That's it.

Sometimes we go over by 15 minutes or so if someone raises something complex. As the author pointed out this can lead to people not listening, but for me personally that is a good thing. It gives me time to catch up on daily news or disengage from my work for a little bit. It's even better that my DSU starts first thing in the morning, so I get to use that time to let my brain slowly warm-up and get ready for real productive work.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#124

Post by polishdude20 »

lukey_q wrote: post #12

I totally agree with the idea that teams should remove blockers as they come up. If someone on my team runs into a blocker 10 minutes after the standup, I hope for everyone's sake that they don't wait until tomorrow's standup to say something, if only because being blocked for a whole day is not really what you'd call "morale boosting". I'm not a huge fan of in-person standups, but if you're going to do them really m…

What's this thing with blockers? I'm not in software and it seems like they're just problems you encounter that need to be resolved before you can continue working? Why not go to your co-workers desk or message them and deal with it on the spot?

Re: Daily standups should be async

#125

Post by jakub_g »

hyperpape wrote: post #6

I think if your standup can be async, then it's ineffective, and you should get rid of it. And to be clear, that's fine! Not every team needs standups. The only value in a standup is when team members actually share ideas about what they're working on. The detailed conversation happens outside the standup, but the purpose of the standup is just to get that moment of "I know about that, let's talk". In that case, havi…

The daily status update has different role for different people (devs, scrum master, tech lead). It might be useless for devs but valuable for scrum master, for example.

The dynamics also depend on # of people involved - the fewer, the more effective.

What we did in my last 2 teams to make standups better:

Team 1: move it from 10 AM to 11h45 (just before the lunch). Advantages: 1) Not stressing out people who are late; 2) Not breaking the work of people who arrive early; 3) Keeping it short - since it's before lunch, it can't last forever because people want to eat.

Team 2: move to slack e-standup. Advantages: 1) and 2) above; 3) Async, so you can do it early, late, or even the evening before; 4) It takes 2 min for each person, not 20 min and you don't have to stare in the floor while your mind is somewhere else; 5) Avoiding "ummmmm whaaat did I do yesterday ummmm let me think" x 10.

Re: Daily standups should be async

#127

Post by alexellisuk »

This quote at the end sealed it for me:

> “It’s clear how even though all companies say they “do agile”, in fact most don’t; they just do random meetings while standing up, which produces bad results that I consider right-out offensive towards developers."

Re: Daily standups should be async

#128

Post by SergeAx »

Oh, that's just mean. "Your team is suck, here's why. How to improve it? I'll tell you somewhere later, don't know when exactly". Are we reading a soap opera here? Hitchcockian cliffhangers, anyone?

Re: Daily standups should be async

#129

Post by deckard1 »

jayd16 wrote: post #77
stephc_int13 wrote: post #31

In my opinion, standups are useless - asynchronous or not. Waiting until the next standup to resolve blockers is clearly not efficient. What I've observed during standups is mostly people staring at the void waiting their turn and a few obnoxious nerds trying to bullshit their way up the hierarchy by talking way too much for their own good. The best communication I've seen was during brainstorm meetings.

>Waiting until the next standup to resolve blockers is clearly not efficient. Yeah, don't do that. Standups are for teamwide information exchange to surface unknown unknowns. If you have a blocker and you can start unblocking it, don't wait.

> to surface unknown unknowns

That may be true. But that's also a good way to turn a 10 minute standup into an hour long spitballing session.

Nearly every blocker or unknown that I've encountered could have been better handled by a 5 minute slack chat with the essential people. Which is almost never my entire team, and is frequently outside the people on my team who would not attend standup anyway.

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