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Comment by algesten | Hacker News Reader

We (the developers) took control over our standups. We went back to basics and talked about _why_ are we doing kanban boards standups, and found two reasons.

1) We do need better awareness of what others around us are doing, especially across the dev/ops divide. 2) Communication, kanban is there to show interested non-devs how projects are progressing.

We update the kanban before the meeting and let one person per day read through the entire board for today/ongoing/blocked. If there are any tasks that person doesn't understand – this is the time to ask.

The process takes often less than 10 mins per day.

Any issues raised will be discussed in loosely formed groups afterwards to not waste everyone's time.

I think what I learned is that you mustn't let process be shoved on you by middle management. Take control to make these things productive for you.

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We have a slack channel. You write what you did yesterday, what you are going to do today. If you are blocked, what is blocking you. When you expect to deliver what. Everyone does it. As a reader, you skip the stuff you don't care much for. Pretty interesting though. Maybe ask someone for further clarification. Works great. I like to do it just before I leave for work. The only issue is some skill-less turkey with a title 'coach' can't make a buck, but I am sure he would pipe in and tell us we are doing it all wrong.

In fact we write plan for today on Slack and later modify me message to change what actually gets done.

It is great because:

1. Most of the time you skim the list, but sometimes want to follow up and collaborate. It helps ppl keep on same page and avoid redoing the same stuff.

2. Async, written as first thing when you come to work.

3. Writing todos and sharing them helps ppl to get focused and make them productive.

We use Geekbot for this. Works great!

This is a great example.

In one team I was coaching, we also experienced that standups improved when we switched to a kanban board and enumerating tasks on the board: We would not ask people "What did you do today", but pick a task and ask: "Who contributed to that task? Who thinks they can contribute?"

This made a huge difference (although there still were people that did not like the daily stand up - but less than before).

This. As an agile coach it absolutely boils my blood when non-programmers take over these activities with their own agenda. Who is actually doing the work here? The programmers, let them talk about what they need to in order to get their work done best.

> The process takes often less than 10 mins per day.

Yikes. That's worth pointing out and celebrating? The most crucial part of "standups" is in the name - a meeting so short you don't need to sit down.

Here's the thing with 'agile' and stand ups. Do whatever's best for your team. Do whatever helps you be productive as possible. Don't just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Well. Yes, I agree that is a "duh, really?!"

However, in my experience, the IT industry is overflowing with pointless process meetings initiated by middle management.

My point was more to give a concrete example on how some (dev driven) initiative can give productive results which was sort of in line with the OP article.

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