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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

#51

Post by tenpoundhammer »

I can't help but have a negative reaction to having this discussion at all. All human beings are unique and different. Getting a group of them together means you will have a unique group dynamic.

Each team needs to develop a process that meets the needs of the group. For some teams standups are useless because the team is on the high end of the communication spectrum and also on the high end of the process spectrum, meaning they communicate well and update their tickets. Other teams are on the low end of both of these and benefit from standups and management structure that forces improvements to both of those.

Agile is about building systems, tools, and processes that allow your team to win. That requires understanding how your team operates and what they need to do their best work. There will never be a right answer to the majority of these types of questions.

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

#52

Post by zer00eyz »

bluGill wrote: post #25
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…

I had 8 people in standup today, the whole meeting took 4 minutes - mostly because of 2 people who had some after meeting news to share. As the team tech lead I need to keep track of what everyone is doing and just looking at stories in progress isn't enough to know if they are making progress or I need to jump in. (most of the time they are or they ask questions after the meeting). There is value in everyone knowing…

This is the way.

If a standup goes longer than 2 ish minutes a person, it's no longer a "stand up". Pull up a chair, sit down and chat, you're having a meeting.

The 3 questions could be answered in 1 to 2 sentences... the check in is for every one to see everyone else's face to inform secondary meetings.

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

#53

Post by BeetleB »

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…

Ouch. 15 minutes is the rule. 30 minutes is way too long. I was in only one team that followed the rule, and after 15 minutes people would start leaving the room regardless of whether others are talking. If someone had a habit of speaking too much, he was coached.

When we were on site, we would try to schedule the room such that someone else had a booking at the 15 minute mark - so you had no choice but to keep it in that window.

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

#54

Post by MajimasEyepatch »

leetrout wrote: post #45
MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you need a designated meeting for communicating with your teammate you already failed the qualification of highly functioning team.

The point is that it's a teammate who wouldn't ordinarily be involved in resolving the issue. There's still value in them learning about it.

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

#55

Post by JohnFen »

kstrauser wrote: post #41
JohnFen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. Especially with remote teams, standups are how I find out that other people on the opposite end of my team are blocked on something I can easily help them with, or that they're doing something that has implications on my own work. I communicate with some people continually. There are others I'd hardly see if it weren't for standups.

> There are others I'd hardly see if it weren't for standups.

If that's a problem, it's a sign that the team is not functioning well. Standups can be a band-aid for the issue while a real solution is being developed, but it isn't a long-term solution in and of itself.

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

#56

Post by lijok »

The comparison to a soccer team is very odd. Further, Brian seems to completely misunderstand the point of standup as he's trying to argue that standup is not conducive for collaboration.

Standup is not the forum for collaboration. Standup, and the three associated questions is purely and simply a dialog enabler. A healthy team has multiple dialog enablers. It's what helps break down the invisible barriers of communication and collaboration. ShapeUp recommends another great dialog enabler - appetite. It's quite literally why dialog enabler tools like gather.town and Slack Huddles exist - because teams struggle enabling dialog.

Cherry on top: Brian opens up by ridiculing appeal to authority, then finishes the article by appealing to authority.

> Managers around the world blindly adopt the same standup meeting format, without critical thought to its usefulness. It is the meeting agenda version of “you won’t get fired for buying IBM”.

> Now that the latest official Scrum guide has already removed the 3 questions, our industry should consider eliminating them too.

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

#57

Post by BeetleB »

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're missing the purpose. It isn't to just sit and wait till the next day to get help. It's to highlight issues that could not be resolved in that time frame, and pointing out that help (or intervention) is necessary.

It's the equivalent of saying "Service X was down yesterday, still hasn't come up, and if nothing is done about it, we'll lose another day."

In teams without standups, these blockers could go on for several days, and no one other than that one engineer would know about it. Now everyone knows and can adjust/react accordingly.

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

#58

Post by georgeecollins »

As someone who was a project manager before "agile" and during I think it is funny to remember how I used to get pressure go from waterfall planning or kanban to agile with daily stand ups. It always felt like a fad and yet I felt a lot of pressure to get with the program.

That phase of my career is long done but my advice to people in that phase is this. Beware of management fads and beware of companies that slavishly adhere to a fad, particular one advocated by consultants. One of the companies I encountered that was most fanatic about "agile methods" was also probably one of the least efficient and slowest to roll out a product. They also had a number of senior execs from management consulting.

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

#59

Post by astura »

mvdtnz wrote: post #39
ipaddr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, my team rarely reports blockers but when they do it's almost always some external factor. If they are reporting the same thing multiple days in a row, I can light a fire under someone's ass, otherwise I might not even know about it.

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

#60

Post by ipaddr »

mvdtnz wrote: post #39
ipaddr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That makes it worse and more pointless.

Any blockers?

Yes one I told you about earlier today

Yes same one we had for a months

Yes I've been ignoring it until this meeting.

What works in real life is saying to the project manager we need to extend the timeline because of these factors. Things get unblocked quickly.

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