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Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

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Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#31

Post by mcv »

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…

I like to alternate these. One day we do a round robin, the other we walk the board. It helps to have different perspectives on the work you're doing.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#32

Post by alfonsodev »

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…

I agree with this, I found that if you go for the Round Robin format, often, people are just thinking about what are they going to say next, and how to make it sound like actual valuable work rather than listen to the colleagues. It gets akward when some people get a lot done (apparently) and others not, also not everyone knows how to "sell" their work, and IMO it can create weird dynamics.

Walking the board is much more helpful for the team and retrospectives and one to ones can be used to talk about productivity differences, individualities and other issues.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#33

Post by wsc981 »

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…

Personally I don't like the daily scrum meetings need a coordinated time. For the company I currently remotely work for, it's fine for my colleagues if I just write down in Slack what I worked on during the day at whatever time is convenient for me.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#35

Post by mcv »

mmsimanga wrote: post #30

> 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. Edi…

There's no PM present in the Scrum daily. In fact, there's no PM in Scrum.

Jumping between different stories before finishing them is fine in solo projects, but if you're working with others, it means more code conflicts. That said, it is absolutely possible to work on multiple stories in Scrum.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#36

Post by andy_boot »

alfonsodev wrote: post #32
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…

I agree with this, I found that if you go for the Round Robin format, often, people are just thinking about what are they going to say next, and how to make it sound like actual valuable work rather than listen to the colleagues. It gets akward when some people get a lot done (apparently) and others not, also not everyone knows how to "sell" their work, and IMO it can create weird dynamics. Walking the board is much…

I also noticed this.

We came up with a variant to fix this. You have to say what the next person in the circle said they'd do yesterday before your talk.

This forced everyone to pay more attention as you don't know who would be standing next to you tomorrow. It wasn't easy to do but I think it did make people more aware of what was going on.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#37

Post by jeresuikkila »

fjfaase wrote: post #27

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…

I agree with the importance of Scrum Master in the meeting but from a different perspective. Without a dedicated Scrum Master the meetings often feel either flat or take an off-topic life of their own. I believe that sort of communication is also important but should then be done outside of the Daily.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#38

Post by petetnt »

celticmusic wrote: post #17
petetnt wrote: post #10

I see the value in daily communication and the general topics (yesterday, today, blockers) of the dailies, but at the same time the daily standups show how the in general much of the modern work and communication has moved to asynchronous methods but the text book example still requires the events to happen in a synchronous way (eg. standup at 9 am) which obviously causes issues. Then you move forward to move say the…

I know, right? How would two consenting adults ever work together to solve problems by communicating? Thankfully we have them stand up daily, without which they'd both just continually walk into the wall like lemmings.

You joke, but the "engineers engineer until ready don't break flow" trope is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a project which is why putting emphasis on _daily_ communication (not just communication) is kinda important.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#39

Post by robjan »

vasco wrote: post #28
moystard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm going to assume the GP meant blockers rather than grievances. Grievances are more like injustices and shouldn't really be aired at standups in a healthy team.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#40

Post by djKianoosh »

andy_boot wrote: post #36
alfonsodev wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, I found that if you go for the Round Robin format, often, people are just thinking about what are they going to say next, and how to make it sound like actual valuable work rather than listen to the colleagues. It gets akward when some people get a lot done (apparently) and others not, also not everyone knows how to "sell" their work, and IMO it can create weird dynamics. Walking the board is much…

I also noticed this. We came up with a variant to fix this. You have to say what the next person in the circle said they'd do yesterday before your talk. This forced everyone to pay more attention as you don't know who would be standing next to you tomorrow. It wasn't easy to do but I think it did make people more aware of what was going on.

wow this would suck in a 20 person standup
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