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Comment by flukus | Hacker News Reader

> when the true purpose is to identify blockers and dependencies before they become problems.

I don't see why we need daily stand ups for this either. What's the point of saying "everything's going fine" every meeting?

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> everything's going fine

for good team lead it should indicate that "something is wrong". It possible cannot be "fine" every meeting, if team is really solving some problems. If team doesn't solve anything complex - there is no need for standup.

But unless there is a problem then "going fine" is just a reiteration of what's on the job board.

if you have a ten person standup, and 8 of those people say "everything's going fine", and they're being honest (key), then you had a good standup. It's good because those other two people are saying "I'm blocked by XYZ".

It takes 5 seconds to say "I'm good, no blockers".

But why can't those two just tell the team they're blocked via email/IM?

They can, and if that works for your team then go for it. Generally, forcing people to talk to each other as human beings tends to get things resolved much more quickly than easily dismissible messages/emails.

> But why can't those two just tell the team they're blocked via email/IM?

I agree with you. You're better having this kind of stuff on a planning board so you can easily see the status of every task with all the information in one place. Why do I need to know the reason for a task being blocked when I'm not working on it and can't do anything to help?

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