So, do OKRs then make any sense?
Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
171–179 of 179 posts
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
that meeting is supposed to only take 5 minutes, and it is only to discover the issue, not to address it. addressing the issue happens after the meeting with only the people who are actually involved.
5 minutes or 5 hours, an interruption is an interruption. My ideal day to be fully productive would've no meetings at all. I don't need each day to be an ideal day, just once a week (or more if at all possible). However, when there is an scheduled interruption each day every day, guess what? Also, anything that feels like micro-management will be considered micro-management. A daily meeting to give a status report lo…
at the beginning or end of the day? or before or after lunch break?
micro-management is if i tell you every single step that you should do, but a daily status-update is not
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have definitely had my battles with people who want to poke holes in my plans, rather than support me. They think they're helping me, but they aren't. They're just killing my enthusiasm. If I'd been left to try, I'd have worked hard at it, had an experienced, learned some things, and maybe even accomplished it. Instead, they did their best to stop me. I now snap at people who do this to me. I no longer let them thr…
That's too bad. I invite criticism of my projects, because I want to make sure I'm not fooling myself. Other people's perspective can shine new light on a problem and force you to reconsider the idea, hopefully leading to improved design.
When I'm ready for criticism, usually after a failure or partial failure, I invite it. Sometimes I even run my plans by people, looking for problems.
But if I'm not actually inviting that criticism, it is neither welcome nor helpful.
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
5 minutes or 5 hours, an interruption is an interruption. My ideal day to be fully productive would've no meetings at all. I don't need each day to be an ideal day, just once a week (or more if at all possible). However, when there is an scheduled interruption each day every day, guess what? Also, anything that feels like micro-management will be considered micro-management. A daily meeting to give a status report lo…
at the beginning or end of the day? or before or after lunch break? micro-management is if i tell you every single step that you should do, but a daily status-update is not
> at the beginning or end of the day? or before or after lunch break?
That could work if everyone gets at work at the same time (+/-30m) or if everyone takes lunch at the same time (+/-30m), which has not been the case in most of the companies I've worked for. It'd be better at the end of the day, assuming no one does extra hours, but then it's even less useful or at least it becomes obvious it's all about status-updates.
> micro-management is if i tell you every single step that you should do, but a daily status-update is not
It's a micro-management enabler. There's no way to know if it's used to pressure someone to deliver, or to do things a certain way, without working in that team.
The bottom line is that stand-ups are of very questionable use. There are just better, more effective ways to communicate what everyone is working on, what things are done, and when someone is blocked. i.e: ticket assignments, PRs, sporadic side meetings, asynchronous communication (Slack, emails, etc), etc.
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
at the beginning or end of the day? or before or after lunch break? micro-management is if i tell you every single step that you should do, but a daily status-update is not
> at the beginning or end of the day? or before or after lunch break? That could work if everyone gets at work at the same time (+/-30m) or if everyone takes lunch at the same time (+/-30m), which has not been the case in most of the companies I've worked for. It'd be better at the end of the day, assuming no one does extra hours, but then it's even less useful or at least it becomes obvious it's all about status-upd…
It'd be better at the end of the day, assuming no one does extra hours, but then it's even less useful or at least it becomes obvious it's all about status-updates.
i disagree that doing it in the evening makes it less useful. it shouldn't matter much if i report resterdays work and my plan for today, or i report todays work and my plan for tomorrow.
and sure, people doing scrum wrong can use this as a way to enable micromanagement. but as has been mentioned elsewhere, the alternative is managers running around and interrupting you at will. it's not reasonable to blame daily standups for that and reject it just because it gets abused by some.
the kitchen knife analogy comes to mind...
i have had nothing but positive experience with daily standups. they help me focus and not spend days trailing off on a tangent or failing to ask for help because i am the junior, to shy to ask questions, or worse, harbor the feeling that no-one cares about my work. in other words, for me the daily standups acted as a team-integrator.
as a team leader and manager, daily standups help me be uptodate on what's happening, and save me from having to invest time to check myself. if anything, daily standups help me avoid micromanaging, because they satisfy my anxiety about the work being done without needing to be intrusive.
5 minutes of your time, that you can prepare for, so you are not surprised by it, and you'll be left alone for the rest of the day.
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?" If you've waited until the next standup to raise a blocker, you've potentially wasted as much as a day of your time. If I have a blocker that I need unblocked to get my work done, I'll immediately get in touch with the person or team that can help unblock me. If I don't know who that is, or need help coordinating, I'll go to my manager, again, imme…
Yes, and. If you figured that out yesterday then yes, you should absolutely go get help immediately. Mentioning blockers in standup is about admitting you need help. Lots of developers have trouble figuring out when they're wrapped around the axle. And it can be a little passive aggressive, but it's also a chance to point out that you've been asking for help and getting nothing. Basically you're warning the master/ma…
It isn't so simple. We are developers, we are used to solve problems on our own. A lot of times I spend a lot of time solving a problem that a coworker already knows. And I don't know that he already knows.
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, c'mon. We're not children. We're professional developers. If anyone I worked with waited even a day to raise a blocker on an urgent task, I'd think much less of their abilities.
I don't disagree. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do to keep the organization moving forward.
It's another trade off, though: do you annoy your developers for what I believe is just a slight increase in velocity?
While I do know some developers who like (or at least get enough value from to tolerate) standup, I know many more who find them an annoying waste of time. For teams that do standup first thing in the morning, it even makes them want to go to work less. How's that for starting the day on the wrong foot?
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Often times when engineers are blocked, they work on a lower priority tasks while they wait. Sometimes that is a good thing but other times they get off track. Not in my experience. Most developers I work with will raise issues in Slack as they come up. That's part of what being an owner of your tasks is about: communicating issues early and often.
Senior developers can work like that, but junior engineers need more managing.
In this case I think it's the opposite: most junior developers I know are much quick (sometimes a little too quick) to ask for help when they're stuck, while a senior developer's ego might get in the way of raising a flag.
Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?" If you've waited until the next standup to raise a blocker, you've potentially wasted as much as a day of your time. If I have a blocker that I need unblocked to get my work done, I'll immediately get in touch with the person or team that can help unblock me. If I don't know who that is, or need help coordinating, I'll go to my manager, again, imme…
Yes, and. If you figured that out yesterday then yes, you should absolutely go get help immediately. Mentioning blockers in standup is about admitting you need help. Lots of developers have trouble figuring out when they're wrapped around the axle. And it can be a little passive aggressive, but it's also a chance to point out that you've been asking for help and getting nothing. Basically you're warning the master/ma…
You don't need standup to have a quick private chat with your manager to tell them you've been trying to get help on something for a while but no one is giving you the time of day. Again: communication is a part of any job. If you aren't communicating, and need a daily meeting to force you to do so, you are not doing your job and need better training.