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Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

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Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#41

Post by ses1984 »

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.

Grievances should relate to a ticket on the board, if not then make a ticket for it, if not that then is the grievance important?

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#42

Post by Yizahi »

mattmanser wrote: post #20
Yizahi wrote: post #14

I don't like or dislike daily meetings much personally, but I think they are needed - mainly for scrum master and PO. Daily can't be replaced realistically with bug tracker dashboard because 80% of daily time is not bug status discussion but let's say mostly human problems. Also I believe there is zero correlation between success of the project as a whole and a need for daily, none at all. People suggest async text i…

I think they are needed - mainly for scrum master and PO...[but] there is zero correlation between success of the project as a whole and a need for daily So, basically, what you're really saying is they're not needed and you don't need scrum masters or POs.

No, I mean that when project is successful a need for daily (or other detailed sync) doesn't diminish. You are still making decisions, plan complex features and communicate with the same humans, only company account has more zeroes, that's all difference.

PS: in our case SMs and POs are actually doing useful work and we aren't holding any worthless meetings which are solely to entertain people not doing anything. If that was what you implied.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#43

Post by TomMarius »

djKianoosh wrote: post #40
andy_boot wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would you have 20 person standups?

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#44

Post by mmsimanga »

mcv wrote: post #35
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.

I work Business Intelligence (BI) using SQL and a reporting tool of choice. There are times when I just cannot write another peace of SQL. I can tell what I am churning out is long winded and likely to be slow. There are always other tasks such as setting up stylesheets, setting my templates, distribution lists for reports and so on. The problem I have is I don't know when I will be tired, typical issue is always the data quality that results in complex SQL.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#45

Post by jeresuikkila »

seer wrote: post #9
jpkeisala wrote: post #5

> Another variation would be to do the daily on Slack which can even be asynchronous. That is exactly what I do. Every morning answer 3 things in Slack. It is also good way to say "Good morning, now I start to work on X, yesterday I did Z and I need some help on Y.

The thing with dailies is not that you share your updates, its more that you’re forced to listen to everyone else’s. Granted you can always snooze a bit and pretend, but that kind of bad faith is usually indicative of other deeper problems with the team. Also this can become a drag if you’re “held accountable” rather than “helped in need” but smart leaders would recognize that and attempt to fix the problem in the te…

> you’re forced to listen to everyone else’s.

This seems to be an overlooked aspect here in the comments too. Yes, nobody likes to be forced to do something but in this case it's worth it. We have enough distractions as it is so taking 15 minutes to focus on what's important to our colleagues can bring forth valuable connections of ideas and people.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#46

Post by chimprich »

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. By far the least useful of the standard standup questions is "what did you do yesterday".

Focussing on the work to be done puts the emphasis on teamwork and skips the pressure on people to justify themselves or play politics by showing off.

That's assuming everyone is doing the work and they're being trusted to do the work. If that's not the case, then you have bigger problems than the format of your daily standup, and standup is not the best time to address them.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#47

Post by bitwize »

dd82 wrote: post #23
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 defini…

> 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.

Any issues with the management an engineer brings up are issues readily solved with a pink slip for the engineer. "Reading the room" is essential -- understanding the company culture -- before you speak. And even then, you might be wrong.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#48

Post by bmcfeeley »

djKianoosh wrote: post #40
andy_boot wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I know we tend to have little control over this as ICs, but I think the party line here is that 20 is too many people to effectively make use of most agile/scrum ceremonies. Do you actually need to know all 19 other persons’ updates?

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#50

Post by jeresuikkila »

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…

> rather than rehearse their updates in their heads ignoring others.

Personally, I always try to take quick notes ahead of time in order to be able to listen to others during the meeting. I'd highly recommend this to everyone to help focus on what others are saying.

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