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The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

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Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#31

Post by bluGill »

ipaddr wrote: post #13
ng12 wrote: post #5

The primary point of standup is to make sure the team gets face-time together every day to talk about their shared workload. Humans are social creatures and getting everyone together for a few minutes is a pretty high ROI activity.

The primary purpose is provide highlights that can be sold as stories for management. If you are looking for a social event that's what happens at lunch over an hour while sitting not a 5 minute standup where everyone is trying to say just enough so they can get back to work. It's sad the standups are considered a social event. Back in the good old days you finished your work chilled on a cheap startup couch while tw…

My company makes a big point in work-life balance. We can meet up in a bar to throw darts at most 2 times per year - anything more and we are impacting family time. Lunch is a good social time, but that is personal time and often better spent meeting with people not on the team (some always go home, some meet with old team members...) Your team should meet during your normal 40 hour work week (or whatever hours you work) for team social time.

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#33

Post by mvdtnz »

johnny99k wrote: post #22
ipaddr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary purpose is provide highlights that can be sold as stories for management. If you are looking for a social event that's what happens at lunch over an hour while sitting not a 5 minute standup where everyone is trying to say just enough so they can get back to work. It's sad the standups are considered a social event. Back in the good old days you finished your work chilled on a cheap startup couch while tw…

How do you meet up at a bar when your team is 1000 miles away?

Well, yes, exactly.

> Back in the good old days [...] What have we sold ourselves lately?

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#34

Post by bluGill »

johnny99k wrote: post #22
ipaddr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary purpose is provide highlights that can be sold as stories for management. If you are looking for a social event that's what happens at lunch over an hour while sitting not a 5 minute standup where everyone is trying to say just enough so they can get back to work. It's sad the standups are considered a social event. Back in the good old days you finished your work chilled on a cheap startup couch while tw…

How do you meet up at a bar when your team is 1000 miles away?

Fly everyone to one place so they can do this. Twice a year is good - enough that it is a good vacation/team building exercise, not so much that people feel like they are married to their job not their spouse.

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#35

Post by bluGill »

ironmagma wrote: post #17
Palomides wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, getting alignment across the team and doing a vibe check at the cost of ten minutes seems pretty reasonable to me, the questions are basically just variants on "how's it going?"

They are too specific, formulaic, and reek of management tactics. If you mean, "how's it going?", say, "how's it going?" As the wise Dr. Seuss said, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant."

Hows it going is too vague for many. Every ask a kid what they learned at school today? The answer is always "nothing", or silence. You need to ask a different question to get a good answer.

Which is one reason look for and ask different questions - if may break someone out of a rut.

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#36

Post by astura »

throwaway9191aa wrote: post #16

These three questions are intended to keep standups short. I haven't, personally, been on a team that sticks to this format. It always ends up with individuals talking about their individual implementation thoughts on whatever they are working on. During this time, others zone out, missing anything that could be important. Nobody learns anything, and nobody is able to fully concentrate on their tasks. I purposefully…

There's many reasons I have my team do our standup in a designated chat room rather than in person.

One reason is because it eliminates facilitation on my part. I don't have to cut people off and make them stay on topic.

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#37

Post by MajimasEyepatch »

JohnFen wrote: post #19
ng12 wrote: post #5

The primary point of standup is to make sure the team gets face-time together every day to talk about their shared workload. Humans are social creatures and getting everyone together for a few minutes is a pretty high ROI activity.

Standups could make sense in a team that isn't operating well, but in a well-functioning team, everyone is having these sorts of discussions with each other during the natural course of each workday anyway. Standups are unnecessary then. My experience with standups is that they're almost entirely worthless. They're rote and performative and rarely, if ever, provide anything that was missing.

It's still valuable to share information about progress and impediments with the whole team. Alice and Bob may have some blocker that they've been communicating about, but Chris wasn't a part of those one-on-one conversations, so the standup gives him some valuable context about what's going on with the rest of the team. Maybe his work depends on something Bob was supposed to complete today that's going to take a few more days, or maybe he's encountered a similar problem before and has some advice, or maybe he'll remember the issue when something similar pops up later on. Alice and Bob would have resolved the blocker themselves, but this helps make sure the information is shared across the team in a way that simply moving cards on a kanban board wouldn't communicate.

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#38

Post by HeckFeck »

CalChris wrote: post #3

Any blockers? If blockers have been resolved immediately then the short answer to the question will be no . Otherwise it will be yes . Sounds like a decent question to me.

With my workplace, this one is always kicked around at the end of standup and is usually taken as a joke. Even the boss is in it. It basically means "we're done, now back to work."

That said, about once per week someone will sincerely speak up with a blocker and get help.

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#39

Post by mvdtnz »

ipaddr wrote: post #7
CalChris wrote: post #3

Any blockers? If blockers have been resolved immediately then the short answer to the question will be no . Otherwise it will be yes . Sounds like a decent question to me.

I hate standup culture. If you have a blocker waiting until the next morning is so wasteful.

Often blockers can persist for several days or even weeks if they come from external factors. If your manager/team lead spots that you've reported the same blockage from infrastructure twice in a row they can chase that up for you. The idea that any given blocker could/should be resolved within the same working day is just a fantasy.

Re: The "3 standup questions" are terrible and need to die

#40

Post by bluGill »

ipaddr wrote: post #7
CalChris wrote: post #3

Any blockers? If blockers have been resolved immediately then the short answer to the question will be no . Otherwise it will be yes . Sounds like a decent question to me.

I hate standup culture. If you have a blocker waiting until the next morning is so wasteful.

You probably also hate it when someone interrupts your flow to ask for help with their blocker.
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