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You don’t need standups

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Re: You don’t need standups

#291

Post by mattmanser »

KZeillmann wrote: post #235
mattmanser wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the agile manifesto and then you look at scrum, it feels as if scrum has nothing to do with agile. It seems to breaks every rule. Scrum is processes and tools over individuals and interactions, by its very nature. Scrum is comprehensive documentation over working software, because you have to map everything out. Scrum is contract negotiation over customer collaboration, by allowing management to effective…

Scrum is all about implementing a system and then adapting it over time to fit your needs. It's all about having the team figure out for itself how to organize. It's not a rigid set of requirements. It's a set of suggestions about how to begin implementing the system, and then trusting the team to figure out what to adapt and what to cut.

That's not how it's presented in real life.

Read something like this:

https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum

All about what has to be done, with a formal role of scrum master.

Phrases like these brook no adaptability:

On each day of the sprint, all team members should attend a daily Scrum meeting, including the ScrumMaster and the product owner

on the first day of a sprint and during the planning meeting

Another activity in Scrum project management is the sprint retrospective at the end of each sprint. The whole team participates in this meeting

Management take Scrum as a set of rules to follow and then use it to micro-manage everyone. Scrum masters end up as middle managers. Daily stand-ups turn in to daily justify your worth.

Re: You don’t need standups

#292

Post by pwm »

KZeillmann wrote: post #231
dudeofea wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screw these other commenters saying you're a stubborn introvert. If I had a company, I would hire you. I have the same view. Micro management erodes trust, which deskills programmers. If you know the exact bounds of what a programmer that you hired can do, then they can never do anything exceptional. I understand large companies need reliable workers because they are working on cornering their market, but for startup…

It's not micromanagement. It's working as a team. I don't really understand what you're saying. Sometimes programmers are proud and don't want to seek out help. They'd rather spin their wheels trying to debug something than stoop to asking someone else for help. It's dumb but it happens.

I'm not GP, but let me try to explain.

The key is to treat people as responsible adult professionals with the best intentions. This way communication will happen organically and proactively. For organic proactive communication async channels are ideal. When you bump into a problem you need help with you message someone you think can help. They will eventually see your message and find the time to reply (seeing and replying won't always happen at the same time). This type of communication is extremely efficient and sustainable. Sync communication also has its benefits and they're trivial to set up using async comms if/when the need arises. This does not mean that recurring synchronous communications aka. standups are bad per se but their value is highly context dependent and oftentimes they are not the best solution.

On the other hand if you treat people as irresponsible children that needs constant supervision then, in my humble opinion, nothing will save you on the long run and implementing mandatory protocols like a daily standup are just surface treatments.

Re: You don’t need standups

#293

Post by barrkel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #259
barrkel wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not a dev manager, it can be a product manager / owner / scrum master / whomever is in charge of roadmap and high-level backlog items. They take control because they've made promises to other people, higher up in the org and possibly outside the company, and they need to find out if scope is expanding too much, if something is taking too long to implement and scope needs to shrink as a result, or people who'v…

> If it's not a dev manager, it can be a product manager / owner / scrum master / whomever is in charge of roadmap and high-level backlog items. In by-the-book Scrum, that's the Product Owner, who isn't a participant in the daily scrum. Neither is the Scrum Master, whose only roles with regard to the daily scrum are: (1) teaching the Dev Team to keep it within a 15-minute time box, and (2) ensuring that it occurs, (3…

Sure, present but not participating.

Re: You don’t need standups

#294

Post by brown9-2 »

closeparen wrote: post #243
brown9-2 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you really on a team then?

A manager usually has several distinct projects in the air, with ICs working on them in groups of 1-3. Someone's work isn't relevant to you just because you report to the same manager. The "team" for standup, sprint planing, etc. is really several teams, each tuning out while the others speak. And because small groups can communicate fine informally, the relevant-seeming part of the team-level ritual is always a reha…

That sounds like a bad structure then. Standups ought to be for the teams of small groups, not the convenience of the manager.

Re: You don’t need standups

#295

Post by bogle »

bunderbunder wrote: post #185
grimjack00 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how I view it: - "big A" Agile has books and approved tools and coaches from outside the company holding week-long all-day workshops. - "little a" agile has devs/QA/etc. suggesting ways to make the process of building and shipping software smoother. I'm currently working on a "little a" agile team. Upper management doesn't really care what our process is, as long as they get their quarterly release with (most…

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that, to be successful, a team's agile practice needs to largely fly under the radar of upper management. As soon as upper management catches wind, you'll need to justify every little process flow change to them, or they'll start demanding regular reports with burndown charts and plots of velocity over time and crap like that. At which point, you're done. Things officially suck for…

I had that once, the bit where management wanted to see the burndowns and velocity, then fixated over same. The only way to move past it was to stop producing them. I did, as the Lead/SM/Dev Manager, have the clout to say no, so that was lucky. I explained it's the working software you need but I don't think they were happy.

Re: You don’t need standups

#296

Post by chadlavi »

QualityReboot wrote: post #251
mr_tristan wrote: post #215

I'm the scrum master on a team where most members are very geographically spread out, and the standup is great. It's time for everyone to have that direct social connection. But I don't ask about ticket status. We just ask about what they did yesterday, and what they're up to today. And I mostly ask that if they aren't doing something already captured in a ticket, make another one, so we have a record of issues takin…

Why doesn't everyone just write what they're up to today in a chat channel and people can reply if they want? It seems kind of silly to me to have everyone dial in or stand around in a circle, to each have one person speak. I'd much rather see a list of what's going on with everyone today and if anything catches my eye, I can talk to them about it.

On a mostly-remote team, it may be the only opportunity in a day for everyone to hear everyone else's voices. Social interaction is important.

Re: You don’t need standups

#297

Post by [deleted] »

still_grokking wrote: post #187
chomp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"working on bugs" is not a great update, it's opaque and doesn't help your team or your leader get a picture of what you're struggling with. "I tried this and this and measured this latency from the application and suspect it's a race condition, I checked this code and feel like I'm on the right track, and if someone wants to take a second set of eyes on my bug I would appreciate it" is a much much better update. Sta…

> Not everyone is great at self-selling, and people who move up in the company are the ones who hype their personal brand, not necessarily those who are the best at their roles. I don't know how to solve this as it's a personality issue, but I do think it can be a problem for a lot of businesses and teams. Oh! Just don't give the show people a stage. You know a stage — like daily standups or so…

[deleted]

Re: You don’t need standups

#298

Post by bitwize »

ravenstine wrote: post #28

One thing I don't like about standups is that they can create a false sense of either blockage or someone being ineffective at their job. For instance, there have been many times where I've worked on a task or a set or related tasks for weeks or months, simply because the tasks required a lot of forethought and careful planning. There were times I somewhat dreaded standups because I knew that I'd say that I'm doing t…

> I don't want to have to say "Yup, still workin' on those bugs" every morning.

Then don't. Give specifics about what you did, what you accomplished or didn't accomplish, and what your next steps are. Provide evidence of forward velocity, or ask for help if you're stuck. The key here is accountability. Don't be "the guy in a room" who doesn't apprise the team of what's going on in his world. That guy is first in line to be fired.

Re: You don’t need standups

#299

Post by ibdf »

I really dislike these type of articles. The title is there just to shock you, and so is the content... so much that there's a disclaimer at the end of it. I think I would read it with an open mind if the title was phrased differently... "Maybe you don't need standup" or "how standup slows down our company" something of that sort.

"The natural side effects of not doing standup are:"

"- Developers communicate more - Your team becomes more remote-friendly - Tech debt gets addressed - Developers feel more in control and less stressed - Developers know you trust them and that you have their back"

These bullet points are non-sense. Perhaps developers were not communicating properly, and that's why you started having stand-ups in the first place. Perhaps your developers need more guidance and someone overseeing them. Maybe your business is growing too fast and you need to have more meetings to get things back under control. Some people are goal driven and can take care of things on their schedule other people don't even know how to make a proper schedule.

Here's what you should do:

1. See what works for you 2. Make adjustments 3. Evaluate adjustments 4. Repeat

Meanwhile, read some books on management and learn from more experienced people. There's no reason to drop everything you are doing because a blog post said so.

Re: You don’t need standups

#300

Post by bitwize »

lttlrck wrote: post #86
chomp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's either a team culture issue, a management issue, or a business culture issue. Teams I've worked on have had no issue brainstorming ideas for a person who's stumped. Now, I'm not totally defending standups here, I've been on teams where daily standups are a stuffy formality, and they are miserable. I've also had the pleasure of being on teams where weekly standups were implemented, and they were an abso…

Are stand up meetings the correct venue for brainstorming?

No, those are things you want to take "offline" or "to the parking lot".
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