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Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

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Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#41

Post by nilkn »

JamesBarney wrote: post #39
nilkn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire reason teams exist as a concept is to improve management and coordination logistics. A standup is a daily meeting that every team member has to attend, and in order for it to be productive it shouldn't just be robotic status updates; each member should actually be ingesting and thinking about everything that's brought up. Making sure it can be run smoothly should actually be considered an important factor,…

Hmm, my first thought for running a 15 person project isn't to run it as three different five person teams. A couple of questions Was the company you work at a software product company? Are your teams cross functional? Do people exist across multiple teams? My fundamental issue with splitting a 15 person team into three 5 person teams it seems more difficult to satisfy two other attributes I think are valuable in tea…

If it truly is a 15 person project for its entire duration then it's not worth splitting up, but you could still consider whether the whole team needs to be present for every standup. More often than not, though, when the team size reaches the 15+ range the project often can be broken down into smaller discrete deliverables that do not need 15 person teams to achieve.

Where I work it is all software. We can and sometimes do have folks on multiple teams but generally try to avoid that. And teams can definitely be cross-functional.

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#42

Post by nilkn »

JamesBarney wrote: post #40
ogre_codes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do daily status meetings and they are often productive. The thing is, if it's a daily meeting, it should last no more than 5-15 minutes. Also, sounds like you have too many people on the call.

Even 10 minute meeting is disruptive. Usually they are in the morning when most people are at their most productive and it takes you out of the flow. Even a 5-10 minute meeting will destroy 30 minutes of productivity from context switching.

Ultimately it's about maximizing the productivity of the team or engineering organization at large more than it is about optimizing the productivity of a single developer. This often means that it's worth creating a mild disruption for individuals if it prevents the team from falling into a dis-coordinated state that can take days or weeks to recover from.

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#43

Post by ogre_codes »

JamesBarney wrote: post #40
ogre_codes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do daily status meetings and they are often productive. The thing is, if it's a daily meeting, it should last no more than 5-15 minutes. Also, sounds like you have too many people on the call.

Even 10 minute meeting is disruptive. Usually they are in the morning when most people are at their most productive and it takes you out of the flow. Even a 5-10 minute meeting will destroy 30 minutes of productivity from context switching.

I get it and to a large extent, I agree, but it's not a random phone call or interruption, it's a scheduled meeting, which is easy enough to work around.

Interruptions are frustrating (don't get me started on phone calls), but when you are working on a project collaboratively, touching bases and knowing what other people on your team is doing is important.

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#44

Post by JamesBarney »

ogre_codes wrote: post #43
JamesBarney wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 10 minute meeting is disruptive. Usually they are in the morning when most people are at their most productive and it takes you out of the flow. Even a 5-10 minute meeting will destroy 30 minutes of productivity from context switching.

I get it and to a large extent, I agree, but it's not a random phone call or interruption, it's a scheduled meeting, which is easy enough to work around. Interruptions are frustrating (don't get me started on phone calls), but when you are working on a project collaboratively, touching bases and knowing what other people on your team is doing is important.

I'm not against collaboration or communication. On the contrary I think it's critical to well functioning and productive teams.

I just think stand ups as I've experienced over 10 teams and 5 organizations haven't been especially useful. They have been a status update mostly for the pm and a little for the tech lead.

What is an example of helpful information you guys are sharing in your stand ups?

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#45

Post by JamesBarney »

nilkn wrote: post #42
JamesBarney wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 10 minute meeting is disruptive. Usually they are in the morning when most people are at their most productive and it takes you out of the flow. Even a 5-10 minute meeting will destroy 30 minutes of productivity from context switching.

Ultimately it's about maximizing the productivity of the team or engineering organization at large more than it is about optimizing the productivity of a single developer. This often means that it's worth creating a mild disruption for individuals if it prevents the team from falling into a dis-coordinated state that can take days or weeks to recover from.

What is being communicated that's saving the dev teams weeks of time?

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#46

Post by ArchReaper »

whateveracct wrote: post #21
ArchReaper wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? All I hear is about how buggy and insecure the platform is. Edit: source, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/google-bans...

It's not buggy like at all. And afaiu the security stuff has solutions that just aren't default (passwords, SSO)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22814198

Security and privacy issues are clearly very real.

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#47

Post by sys_64738 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #12

The meeting I find the biggest time waster is the "what I did yesterday, what am I doing today" meetings. Nothing better than sitting on a 45 minutes call while 15 people try to justify their existence to the pm on the fly. I find a slack channel called #status-updates works wonders. It persists, it's much faster to consume, it's searchable, and you don't have to read it if you don't need to.

You'd make me use Slack?

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#48

Post by sys_64738 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #17
JamesBarney wrote: post #12

The meeting I find the biggest time waster is the "what I did yesterday, what am I doing today" meetings. Nothing better than sitting on a 45 minutes call while 15 people try to justify their existence to the pm on the fly. I find a slack channel called #status-updates works wonders. It persists, it's much faster to consume, it's searchable, and you don't have to read it if you don't need to.

We do daily status meetings and they are often productive. The thing is, if it's a daily meeting, it should last no more than 5-15 minutes. Also, sounds like you have too many people on the call.

A 15 minute meeting where the person doing the talking has to stand up. That quickly makes very short meetings.

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#49

Post by ogre_codes »

JamesBarney wrote: post #44
ogre_codes wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it and to a large extent, I agree, but it's not a random phone call or interruption, it's a scheduled meeting, which is easy enough to work around. Interruptions are frustrating (don't get me started on phone calls), but when you are working on a project collaboratively, touching bases and knowing what other people on your team is doing is important.

I'm not against collaboration or communication. On the contrary I think it's critical to well functioning and productive teams. I just think stand ups as I've experienced over 10 teams and 5 organizations haven't been especially useful. They have been a status update mostly for the pm and a little for the tech lead. What is an example of helpful information you guys are sharing in your stand ups?

At my current job, It's where pretty much all information about our project gets disseminated so without it, we'd be feeling around blind. Any priority changes; changes which might not be well defined in the wires or stories; deadlines; information about meetings with the clients. It's also the place where the dev team, design, and QA touch base so if an issue comes up where there are pieces missing in the wires or QA is struggling to test something, we can quickly bring it up.

A big chunk is actually most useful for the PM, but often enough other issues get addressed that our short status meetings don't bother me.

Re: Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

#50

Post by nathanaldensr »

ogre_codes wrote: post #49
JamesBarney wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against collaboration or communication. On the contrary I think it's critical to well functioning and productive teams. I just think stand ups as I've experienced over 10 teams and 5 organizations haven't been especially useful. They have been a status update mostly for the pm and a little for the tech lead. What is an example of helpful information you guys are sharing in your stand ups?

At my current job, It's where pretty much all information about our project gets disseminated so without it, we'd be feeling around blind. Any priority changes; changes which might not be well defined in the wires or stories; deadlines; information about meetings with the clients. It's also the place where the dev team, design, and QA touch base so if an issue comes up where there are pieces missing in the wires or Q…

Asynchronous communication--Slack, Discord, Teams, etc.--beats this every time. Why wait an entire day to bring up important topics? And then, if you aren't waiting an entire day, why have the artificial morning ceremony?
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