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Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

blog.valuemotive.com

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Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#51

Post by mytailorisrich »

jeresuikkila wrote: post #45
seer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Face to face communication, and thus listening to others, is the whole point of the daily scrum.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#52

Post by sime2009 »

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.

There is a simple solution to this. After the board is done someone can just ask "Has anyone got anything else to add?"

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#53

Post by matthewmacleod »

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

Literally everything would suck in a 20 person standup.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#54

Post by matthewmacleod »

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.

I know you're being facetious but basically yes. Some developers are great at working together and communicating with no formal structure in place. I have found over my career that maybe 50% of developers are absolutely appalling at doing so, and prefer to continue stumbling round in the dark. This applies even to developers who are reasonably technically competent. For these people, the enforced daily standup solves that problem.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#56

Post by rumanator »

sime2009 wrote: post #52
rumanator wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a simple solution to this. After the board is done someone can just ask "Has anyone got anything else to add?"

>>There is a simple solution to this. After the board is done someone can just ask "Has anyone got anything else to add?"

That doesn't cut it. Being expected to talk about stuff doesn't put you on the spot, and purposely requesting the team to address a concern makes you stand out as the one creating problems where none existed.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#57

Post by lowercased »

seer wrote: post #24
bitL wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not weekly? Or twice a week? Advantage of remote is that you can prioritize incoming information and everybody is onboard with asynchronous communication by default.

It's not about information sharing, dailies are crappy for that anyways. You should always have async information centre so people can get up to speed. The idea is to be able to share the squishy emotional human bit of working with a team of people. Without it I've seen people just slowly drift apart. You'd see a comment from a coworker on your PR and be like "argh who is this guys think he is! He's totally wrong" bu…

> You'd see a comment from a coworker on your PR and be like "argh who is this guys think he is! He's totally wrong" but if you can talk with him about it in video it becomes a lot less confrontational. You can apologise and be apologised to.

Unless that doesn't happen. Perhaps he digs in his heels that he's "right" when he's demonstrably wrong? Or 'he' is the team lead, and it doesn't matter whether he's right or wrong, we all now move in that direction "because". Having to have video/f2f in situations like that adds more stress.

Dealing with this situation now, and it's bad.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#59

Post by philbarr »

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.

This sounds horrendous. It doesn't really feal like it would achieve much either except making standups even harder.

Re: Are Daily Scrum meetings worth it?

#60

Post by dd82 »

bitwize wrote: post #47
dd82 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Wow, I really feel sorry for whatever situations you've found yourself in.
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