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Standups are Poisonous

garethrees.co.uk

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Re: Standups are Poisonous

#51

Post by tjtrapp »

To curtail the length, have you tried using the "parking lot" option?

If someone starts to get off on a topic that isn't related to "what i completed yesterday", "what im going to complete today", "any impediments" then raise your hand and call "parking lot". This informs the person to wait until after standup to have the conversation.

The first time I did it people thought I was crazy. I got looks like, "who the heck is this guy to cut me off?" but the next few times I start to raise my hand, the person realizes and ends their talking.

Give it a shot. Google "stand up parking lot" for more info.

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#53

Post by overdrivetg »

ollysb wrote: post #19
onemorepassword wrote: post #7

This guy is seriously suggesting replacing stand-ups with management and paperwork? There's something very wrong here, but that was already clear from the objections. "30 minutes", "action points", "notes", "weekly update"? Seriously, I know that "you're not doing it right" is the standard lame excuse from Scrum-evangelists, but this paints a picture of doing pretty much the opposite of Scrum. Especially the emphasis…

The scrum can be any time of the day that's convenient. At my last place we used to do one just before lunchtime. Definitely a good way to keep it short...

After experimenting with a bunch of different times, this is the best we'd found. Late risers have time to get in, people are hungry so it stays short, etc. Just start at noon minus however long you want the meeting to last...

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#54

Post by johnbellone »

calpaterson wrote: post #49
podperson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the original writer means 30min of wasted time for six people, not 30min ranting per person.

I really hope that was the case, but he did say this: > 6 person team * 30 minutes = 3 hours lost

6 person team * 30 minutes = 180 minutes / 60 = 3 hours

All of this helps if he would have used the common term man hours because 3 hours literally wasn't lost. In my experience the people that make these kinds of claims are the people usually confused about project management, at least for software development, in general.

Unfortunately at larger corporations everything comes down to how many man days a project can fit in a quarter without taking into account the fact that most phases in projects can't fire at the same time due to dependencies.

I actually think Gannt charts model this quite nicely for the higher ups.

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#55

Post by vpeters25 »

This is what usually happens when you have a poorly trained scrummaster. One of the reasons there are so many $AGILE_PROCESS_NAME sucks posts on the internet.

I respectfully disagree with all the "you are doing it wrong" replies. In this case, it's not your or your team's fault, but your scrummaster is definitely doing it wrong.

I've been scrummaster on teams over 12 people and our daily standup meetings lasted around 3 minutes and rarely got to 10 minutes or over.

In agile, the team self-manages itself. If 10 am is not working, change it. If meetings are taking too long, bring it up as a blocker on the standup itself or on the next retrospective (you guys do these, right?). Have the team agree on making adjustments but focus on one adjustment every iteration.

In short: Inspect and Adapt

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#56

Post by ricardobeat »

mbehrendt wrote: post #42
darxius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how we do things where I work. We're a pretty big team (about 12) and our standups are finished in 10 to 15 minutes. It's strictly time-boxed and we don't go over. If you can't make it, we have a phone set up in the middle of the table for people to call in, or you can email someone on the team and they will say your standup for you.

If this works for you it's awesome, congrats. But what I saw in the past (3 different companies) was more like 30m+ standups, because most people (funny enough especially project managers) tend to talk way too much during standups. Unfortunately.

Had the same experience. They can't help turning it into a status report, and think it's a good show to talk a lot. PMs and Agile are hard to mix.

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#57

Post by ascotan »

Having been a project lead and scrum master in the past, I've found there are a few real purposes to scrum imho.

1. It should be a place were the lead helps people coordinate. Not just work, but their schedules. If dev A will be finishing up widget A on Wed. then dev B knows he needs to hustle, etc.

2. It's a place where QA can get a grip on what's happening in development. Most of the time QA has no idea what's going on in dev, and having the QA guys in scrum helps them.

3. It forces lazy devs (who spend all day on youtube) to actually report status the next day in front of all the other devs.

A few more thoughts.

1. It should be around 15 minutes. Too short and it just becomes a round robin. That's great, but a lead should be able to adjust the work and coordinate at scrum. You can't really do that in 3-5 minutes. If it's too long, the devs get cranky because you're killing their dev time.

2. No PMs. Project managers imho should not attend scrums because they speak a different language (it's called powerpoint) and they usually a) don't understand what's being said b) freak out when qa says there's a bug c) like to get on a soapbox about schedules and releases when it's not appropriate.

It's far better to have the lead/leads manage the PM separately be delivering separate status reports to him directly (either through email or a formal report-like deliverable).

3. No more than 10 people. I would say around 6 is best, but you can't have a 15 minute scrum, when the number of people is too large. If you have more people, you need to split them into groups of 6-10 and then have a 'superscrum' for the leads. This type of 'superscrum' is great for have the PM join in, because it can focus mainly on resource management and schedules (which is what PMs love to talk about).

@OP I've actually have asked for people to report status via email (particularly when I have a bunch of remote guys), and it's really terrible. You end up getting a bunch of emails which you have to respond to. That's great if your a developer and you can put you AD LIB email on a cron job for the lead, but for the lead, the coordination of the team via email will eat up most of your morning. It simply better to call in or show up and everyone be in the same room for 15 minutes.

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#58

Post by mbehrendt »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #50
mbehrendt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this works for you it's awesome, congrats. But what I saw in the past (3 different companies) was more like 30m+ standups, because most people (funny enough especially project managers) tend to talk way too much during standups. Unfortunately.

> project managers There's your problem. That role is the antithesis of a self organising team. With someone responsible for "managing" that stand up turns into a very expensive way to keep the manager briefed.

True.

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#59

Post by tcharron »

mbehrendt wrote: post #42
darxius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how we do things where I work. We're a pretty big team (about 12) and our standups are finished in 10 to 15 minutes. It's strictly time-boxed and we don't go over. If you can't make it, we have a phone set up in the middle of the table for people to call in, or you can email someone on the team and they will say your standup for you.

If this works for you it's awesome, congrats. But what I saw in the past (3 different companies) was more like 30m+ standups, because most people (funny enough especially project managers) tend to talk way too much during standups. Unfortunately.

In Scrum that's where the Scrum Master comes in. It's their job to facilitate the meeting to ensure that those conversations are continued after the meeting.

A good team will often find ways to achieve these things without requiring the Scrum Master to step in.

Re: Standups are Poisonous

#60

Post by pasbesoin »

The problem section reads like: Agile meets corporate, and loses. (Perhaps an inevitably outcome.)

The solution reads vaguely like: We're already distributed (in time -- flexi-time -- if nothing else), so manage us like a distributed team.

The solution still strikes me as somewhat too bureaucratic, vis à vis the intent of a "standup" ("daily X", etc. -- choose your own name), as I see it. That being to informally, loosely, but effectively sync members' working states and awareness. Everyone should be free to take what notes are personally meaningful to them.

But formal documentation should be a separate track. That would include the "agenda / meeting notes" PDF CYA that appears to be going on and/or proposed, here.

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