Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

blog.valuemotive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 120 posts

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#21

Post by a012 »

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…

Walking the board is effective to have all team members in the same page of what's going on. But if the amount of tickets on kanban boards is huge, it could be time consuming. I'd rather have weekly "walking the board" meeting than a daily.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#22

Post by moystard »

rumanator wrote: post #18
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.

I would rather have this kind of discussions in the retrospective. It is a dedicated time for the team to discuss pain points, and to take actions to heal them.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#23

Post by dd82 »

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.

>Maybe it's better when you take away the power relations

What do you mean by this? Are there significant issues with the management or other devs? This really should be a time where you bring up the issues you're having, and options for others to help you.

Sometimes, tickets just get way underpointed, and I've definitely felt the "on trial" frame of mind, but that's more me putting more pressure on myself. It definitely helps when the rest of the team is asking "ok, you're in a rough spot. What can we do to make it easier?"

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#24

Post by seer »

bitL wrote: post #15
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.

It's not about information sharing, dailies are crappy for that anyways. You should always have async information centre so people can get up to speed.

The idea is to be able to share the squishy emotional human bit of working with a team of people.

Without it I've seen people just slowly drift apart. 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.

A jira board is just a means to have some shared concern to talk about. And done properly can leave you with a feeling of being part of something bigger, rather than a lonely coder talking to a computer.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#26

Post by klemola »

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…

Gotta try to "walk the board" in place of a daily someday soon. Sounds nice.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#27

Post by fjfaase »

As so many things with scrum, a lot depends on the attitude of the scum master. If the scrum master is an ambitions person and focusing on results, stand-up meetings can be become a drag. If however, the scrum master has a focus on the team and it members, it can become a source of cooperation and encouragement. Many companies that want to implement scrum, do not want to pay the cost of hiring people who are good at being scrum masters (and are not necessary software engineers), but decide to assign the role to some existing people in the company, which, often results in people who see it is a stepping stone to a management position to opt for the role of scrum master.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#28

Post by vasco »

moystard wrote: post #22
rumanator wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would rather have this kind of discussions in the retrospective. It is a dedicated time for the team to discuss pain points, and to take actions to heal them.

I think the sooner the team is aware about issues the better.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#29

Post by mcv »

I think they're absolutely worth it. The interruption of flow is minor, because they're predictable. You can plan around them. If you're working on something really complex and urgent, I don't mind if you skip it occasionally (but don't make that a habit).

I think it's good to start the day together, with some idea of what everybody is working on. It helps to detect some issues that otherwise might be ignored or detected too late. Generally, communication is good, and short communication is better.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#30

Post by mmsimanga »

> This will interrupt programming flow.

This for me is the biggest drawback. When you are in the zone and interrupted it takes long to get back in the flow again.

Another point is I don't solve problems in a linear fashion. When I am stuck I sometimes jump to another part of the application that I know I will have to tackle later on. That's just me. This is hard to explain in Agile with a PM/scrum master present.

Edit: PM/scrum master because we have mixed environment.

Post reply on HN