Hacker News Reader

Comment by someotherperson | Hacker News Reader

* Alternate different people at random to run the standup

* Control people who talk for too long or go into detail that's not worthwhile

* If you have a board, run through each ticket in progress/in review for a casual update, record it as a note

* Have an icebreaker (1 minute) before or after, ie "fun fact of the day" or something and randomly choose people to do it

* Ends with a section on anything else to add, if anyone is blocked, whatever, and have people break out into their own meetings if necessary

* If it spills over 15 minutes then continue to trim down on the update complexity

View on HN

We routinely have standups less than 5 minutes unless someone has something they want to discuss with the team. Our EM doesn't even want status updates since that's already shown on the JIRA board. "No blockers" is a fine verbal contribution to standup.

This business of hour-long standups sounds insane and so wasteful. If it's taking devs that long, it sounds like something is missing elsewhere.

Here are some questions that might help identify the problem. Are you using a good ticket/issue tracker? Are devs talking/collaborating during the day? Is there a sense of group ownership of work done? Is there a tech owner/point person for each epic/larger unit of work? Are you breaking tickets down into small pieces (no more than a few days of work each)? Do devs discuss implementation plans regularly? Are business requirements clearly communicated? Do you practice continuous delivery (release each ticket directly to production when done - if need be, behind a feature flag)? Does the business optimize for DORA metrics? Do dev teams own decoupled vertical slices of technology?

I think creating a culture where it’s ok to not have to justify yourself is so hard but important. Being able to say “nothing of note to update the team on” or “still focused on X,y,z at the moment” is great. If team members or leaders want to dig in / ask questions great. So many organizations create dynamic where people feel they need to demonstrate all the work they’re doing (and some people just have an innate need to do this as well (often the least productive people)). Obviously leaders and managers to need to be connected to that - but standups don’t seem to be the right place for that

This is a problem created by management though. So many meetings are just reiterating data. Managers feel the need to say "ok everyone, here is the data we all have access to. I will now read it aloud to you." or "Please give me all the information that is already in our ticketing system and read it to me." And that justifies their paycheck.

There's just no fixing that.

> This business of hour-long standups sounds insane and so wasteful.

The media has been proclaiming "Agile is dead" recently. I wonder if all these tech layoffs have come simply because that hour was gained back for productive use?

I think most of what people call "Agile" (big A) is a cargo-cult where they try to imitate and prioritize the very things the original manifesto[0] devalues -- especially processes and tools and following a plan.

All that while devaluing or ignoring the power of individuals and interactions and responding to change.

It turns out that who you hire, how they interact, and how productive you allow them to be have far more power to create value than applying certain "Agile" processes and tools.

[0] https://agilemanifesto.org/

You forgot the most important part - buy-in from management. It wouldn't surprise me if they're the reason the updates are lengthy.

That's true, but some people also just like to ramble

The rambling is easier to correct than having a boss that wants an in-depth status on every ticket.

> Alternate different people at random to run the standup

I feel like having to resort to tricks to keep people engaged in a meeting is a good sign that the meeting isn't a good use of time.

It's less about keeping people engaged and more about making everyone in the team understand how it should be ran. Once you run these meetings a handful of times you start to appreciate that people coming in late or giving nonsensical contributions is irritating and the outcome is that the individual who ran it ends up contributing better to the same meeting next time.

This goes for all meetings (and literally all roles in all workplaces even outside of tech). It's there to build first hand understandings and empathy and, if these meetings are a waste of time, empowers the entire team to change it or abandon it.

I dunno when I run standup I am just as passive as when I'm part of it. I just prompt people to speak and then zone out if its not useful like every time.

Or go written. It is a great fit for some teams.

So called "async standups" are fantastic. The only thing that changes between 5:00p and 9:00a the next day is I've typically forgot what I'm working on so being able to post my standup for tomorrow at the end of the day is so nice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com