Hacker News Reader

Comment by cynicalsecurity | Hacker News Reader

It's really bad when standups last for half an hour. A standup must include 5-7 people at most and last no longer than 15 mins. Preferably 5-10. Anything else should be discussed outside of standup between specific team members only.

View on HN

I'm skeptical that there is anything of value communicated in just 15 minutes when you have more than one speaker and without a very specific agenda. At most you're going to get a brief status update, but that is pointless information as it already known by way of the commit log.

And then there's a "parking lot attendant" ready to kill useful/interesting discussions "in the interest of everyone's time".

Nothing of importance is happening in the code base.

What's important are blockers like inability to implement something, missing permissions, awaiting external communication, freshly detected requirements that need a decision, absences etc pp

Everyone will already know about the blocker as soon as it happens. Reasserting it again at a regularly scheduled meeting would be even sillier than regurgitating the commit log. At least there is a slim chance someone hasn't kept up with the commit log. There is no chance of someone not being aware of blockers by the time the standup comes around.

> freshly detected requirements that need a decision

Oh, in that case one should definitely wait 23 hours to bring that to anyone's attention, and for sure an (allegedly) 15 minute meeting is a great place to get requirements

> absences

Uh-huh, go ahead and include births and puppy adoptions, too; I can see that you and the Certified Scrum Master™ have obviously attended the same workshops on Team Health

There are so many stand-ups I've been in where my coworkers would say what they've been working on and none of it would apply to me or my work and vice versa. It was more for the manager to hear what's being worked on. I think status updates should just be async in your slack channel

they can be!

Thing is, the standup originated out of a methodology that describes operation of an organization without managers. The standup is time allotted for the developers to fulfill some of the duties the manager would have otherwise done for them. Perhaps there is some kind of merit to it if you actually operate that way, but if you can recognize someone as the manager then why are the developers doing their job? Async or not, it is just silly cargo culting.

A stand-up is "here is what I worked on, here is what I'm going to work on, and here is what I had or am having trouble with". And if I can help you out with something or want to discuss more for any other reason, then I say "John, I can help you with that; I'll hit you up after the meet", and you say "k" and that's the end of it.

Or at least, that's how it should be. But half the people tell long shaggy dog stories because they fear "I worked on feature X, it's going well" or some such is too short or basic, but it's not. Or they turn into long protracted debug sessions that's only really of interest to two people but 7 others are watching. That should be done after the standup.

It's really just intended to 1) give everyone a basic idea of what people are working on, and 2) a moment to check in and ask for help, and/or offer help.

Right, understood that the standup was conceived under XP, which is a framework for operating self-organizing teams without managers, and it is likely you need that collaboration when you have no mangers.

But when was the last time you saw a team without managers? When you have managers, the whole reason for their existence is to take that kind of management work off the plate of developers, so that the developers can focus on what's important.

If you are having standups and managers, you need to seriously consider replacing the managers because they have straight up failed to do their job.

I like async standups on slack. Everyone just post what you are doing today, and if anyone has any questions they can follow up.

See, I have almost the opposite opinion: it costs more interruption and "life stupidity" to have 7 people stand up, assemble, stop talking about sports, go around the room saying "no blockers," go get a pastry, go back to their desks, unlock their workstations, try to remember what the hell they were trying to do before all that dumbness. All of that to just hear the exact same thing any sane person who gave a shit could have read on a report emailed to them that morning, or -- more common in my experience -- that they would have read in the Mattermost/Slack/Teams/Zulip from the past day

If one wants a status report, fine, have one periodically. But don't vaporize 30 minutes a day times 7 people just to go around the room talking. What a 1950s concept holy shit

I have never in my life met a professional who sits on their hands for 23 hours waiting to say "uh, I have a blocker, but wanted to save it for this magic 15 minutes to ask for help." Yes, fine, n00bs do that, and that's what TFA was saying that interns need supervision, who knew.

Hard agree. It's all just devolved into cargo cult nonsense, follow the process, to parrot what they think large orgs are doing. And if you have an adequately competent culture, those noobs aren't going to be left hanging, they're going to learn that it's ok to ask to help get unblocked, and that's what should be taught.

And yeah, I also can't agree more with your assessment about status reports being this relic from the past. What is this? The military? "SITREP. NOW!" Such a waste of breath, time, human life.

I feel like in a remote culture, stand-ups are kind of playing double duty. Both as a status reporting time and a team-vuuldinf socialization time.

I feel we should separate these two things into async slack status reports and them regularly maybe bi weekly 30 minute team building meetings where no work is being talked about.

I was around (working remotely, even) before anyone had ever heard of standups. Back then, developers were excited enough about their work that they would share what they were working on by their own accord.

How did we get to the point where we determined that the only way to get anything out of developers was to setup a meeting to force it out? Telling them they must provide a status update on Slack instead is ultimately just a different cartoon character on the same basic bandaid – What is the actual problem here?

It could be the feeling that nobody cares about your work. I don't give status updates naturally because I don't usually feel anybody cares or needs that info other than managers or PM's

I mean, sure, outside of managers, there is no reason for anyone to care. That's literally why the developers have managers working for them: To have someone keep tabs on what is going on so they don't have to.

But I mean with respect to managers. The collaboration with them used to be exciting. What changed?

> I have never in my life met a professional who sits on their hands for 23 hours...

I will if there is a regularly scheduled meeting to discuss such matters. If the company is fine with you taking the day off, take it!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com