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Yesterday is history, can't change it, and it's documented in commit messages or bug tracker notes. No point in rehashing it for the group.
We report what I am planning for today and any blockers.
Props to you if you manage to follow this and squeeze it into 15 minutes. I‘ve genuinely never had a daily last less than 60 mins.
Scrum might not be perfect for every situation but it's a damn sight better than a swirling miasma of agenda-less quasi-recurring meeting invites buttressed by orphaned Google Docs and Slack threads. I've worked on exactly one team where we pretty much did Scrum to the letter and it was great. Meetings were short and sweet and we always knew what we had to build or fix. I was just a kid and we were using a super-janky tech stack but it was among the most productive, low-stress times in my career.
What I struggle with is that any blockers or delays that I may have, I’ve already signaled in our team chat. And the social pressure against saying “I didn’t do much” is tremendous, and it’s hard for anyone who cannot completely abandon worrying about what others may think of them to admit that, even if they have a reason to do so. An actual progress report meeting 1-2 times a week is so much better.
> syncing plans and priorities for the current day
Most of the work developers do require syncing multiple times a day, either by slack messages, GitHub comments or pair programming, etc. Waiting for the daily to sync is not realistic and would waste tons of time.
> signaling blockers early so the team can help
If you have a blocker and you wait until the daily to mention it, you have a bigger problem. Blockers should be notified right away and most teams do this over slack or other messaging platforms they use.
> encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing
Teams are usually small, and if you don’t already know what someone is doing, you wouldn’t care what they have to say during the daily, and if you care what they have to say, you already know what they are doing.
> building a sense of team ownership and support.
Just go for a coffee break.
If you believe daily standups are useful, chances are you’re actually part of the problem.
One thing I’d suggest you try is to switch from people-centric to work-centric standup. Instead of going person by person, pick your rightmost “in progress” column and get an update on that issue. What’s needed? Who needs to help? That sort of stuff.
I find this moves through the standup fairly quickly and puts the focus on how to get things done. It also highlights when something isn’t clear for the team and you can follow up after.
> Daily stand-ups are a cornerstone of agile software development A cornerstone of micro-management, at best. Daily stand-ups can work when there is no manager present and it's just the people working on what they need to get done.
This is an example of when Daniel Kahneman said that people don’t believe in something because there are arguments but believe the arguments because they believe in something. Here’s why I think so: > syncing plans and priorities for the current day Most of the work developers do require syncing multiple times a day, either by slack messages, GitHub comments or pair programming, etc. Waiting for the daily to sync is…
They should but it doesn’t always happen. Having a stand up makes sure you can get that information into the open.
This holds for literally everything. You shouldn’t hold back conversations for your 1-on-1 but, if you don’t have them, you’ll find there’s a load of conversations you miss out on that you needed to have.
> Daily stand-ups are a cornerstone of agile software development A cornerstone of micro-management, at best. Daily stand-ups can work when there is no manager present and it's just the people working on what they need to get done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's insane. how many of you are there?
We were 5 people total - PO, Scrum Master, 3 devs. Been years since I was in that team but it was expected that everyone would give a lengthy update about the previous day
What I struggle with is that any blockers or delays that I may have, I’ve already signaled in our team chat. And the social pressure against saying “I didn’t do much” is tremendous, and it’s hard for anyone who cannot completely abandon worrying about what others may think of them to admit that, even if they have a reason to do so. An actual progress report meeting 1-2 times a week is so much better.