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Comment by antonp | Hacker News Reader

What are your thoughts on daily stand-ups and scrums with fully remote teams with different chronotypes. Does that work for you guys?

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We just have a bot that asks you when you wake up what you're up to.

It's mainly so I know what I'm interrupting if I start writing to someone, but everyone can look in the bot's channel for the same purpose.

As for everyone being on different times, it's not a problem. There's always someone you can talk to, and you know what everyone else is doing. Plus there's a chat history for every project, and cards for every outstanding issue.

That's a really interesting approach to the daily stand-up!

I've never heard of this before, but I'm going to give it a go on my next project - would he interested to hear if anyone else has tried this?

We tried it for a while but switched back to actual stand ups. There were several reasons:

1. Stand ups aren’t status updates, they’re replaning meetings, conversation matters.

2. People stopped answering the bot. It feels like an impersonal management tool.

3. There’s no need to persist the standup output.

4. Remote workers feel more like they’re part of the team. The whole team can chit chat for a few minutes before to start the day.

5. We worked on streamlining our meetings. They are always between 8-12 minutes. Making it async. Means it might be a couple hours before you get everyone’s info, that slows down the replaning process a lot.

1. If you are replaning (?) every day, maybe your project is in chaos and needs some real planning so people can make consistent progress without changing direction every day?

4. Everyone is forced to kill time or disrut schedule so that they can start the day at one privileged time.

5. Aren't you slowing down by waiting for a meeting to get the info? Everyone has to prepare for the meeting in advance, so waiting for the meeting is delay.

I assume he is not talking about changing direction so much as:

- "This implementation of the API was trickier than expected, so it will take a couple of days more I think".

- "Ok, maybe I can help you with it instead of starting with the front end then?"

If the only way to do this sort of communication is to force it out through a stand-up surely something is very wrong?

I thought the software world had generally agreed that adding extra people to something that’s running late is rarely the right answer.

That is when you are running late on a project and adding new people. Someone that is already up to speed in the project does not have that limitation.

Adding new person to project and team member knowledgeable about project helping somebody else with a task are two very different things.

This just indicate that it's just a pointless managerial social status and/or micromanagement practice. If you don't need to persist it, or people stop answering the bot, maybe it's because people feel it's meaningless? One can't suggest that as easily in-person to a manager.

Surely healthy communication isn't forced in-person standups every days. Other professions would probably feel insulted by the practice.

we use a stand-up bot, and currently we are all in the office. We don't have the same work schedule, but it does overlap I probably 6 hours. Having a bot manage stand-up is great because it means that stand up reports are persisted for easy review later, and there is no debate or controversy over the proper time to do a stand-up.

There are disadvantages of course, such as the fact that any sort of communication regarding the stand-up report must be done asynchronously when people get around to reading it. It also puts some onus on members to actually read each other is reports and respond to questions comments and concerns.

This was a big thing around 2011 - 2013 when HipChat was catching traction, then obviously Slack in 2013-2014.

It worked/works well for remote teams and slowly fell out with a lot of big corporations using (Enterprise) Slack.

Same at my company. We funnel the artifacts of our work, like commit messages, to a particular Slack channel. Then my manager reads off the Slack channel. They use Zapier (I'm biased, I'm a Zapien) to automate and collate the channel.

Am I the only one that thinks stand-ups are pretty much worthless? We have two versions, in person once a week. Then a daily slack version. Recently I asked in a real stand-up "does anyone actually read them", 2 out of 25 hands went up. I was surprised by people being so candid that they don't. I don't, it's generally irrelevant. It's a waste of time.

Interpersonal direct communication and making sure the appropriate people are kept in the loop is far more efficient. Otherwise it becomes a bunch of meaningless chatter.

Updating status is beneficial for the individual and the senior engineers.

I have never seen that in action. The seniors don't care, don't read the status updates, are not listening to actual stand-ups. We just pretend to. When something needs to be communicated or worked out with team members efficiently it's with the relevant people directly.

Stand-ups are a waste of time.

Why precisely?

Maybe for very new people who need high levels of guidance it could be helpful. But it’s a practice that has no basis in evidence to be so widespread.

The Slack versions are probably for the manager more than the individual engineers on the team. If you can't even give your manager a quick update on what you're working on, I think there's a problem. And there's no reason to hide that information from your teammates, so you might as well share it. Boom -- standup.

The manager isn't doing their job if they depend on slack updates. And if they don't already know what you are working on, they are not a manager. Teammates are usually not hiding info, if they the manager has completely failed and so has that. Effective communication is important with the appropriate people. Broadcasting what I'm working on is a complete waste of time, shows lack of leadership in the company and direction. Its only use is to make yourself look, it's bragging right. But it's still a waste of everyone else's time.

How, exactly, do I already know (yknow, if I'm a good manager) what an engineer is working on if he's remote, and has 4 cards assigned to himself in Doing?

They are working on the stuff they are assigned to. If you need to know exactly what they do each minute of the day you could ask them directly. If there are cards they shouldn’t work, then find a better way to prioritize cards that engineers can pick up. Don’t waste other people’s time.

I also think that stand ups are a terrible idea. It feels like extreme micromanagement. With everyone using slack it’s silly to wait a day for this specific meeting to say what they’re blocked on or raise other issues.

Note that I don't want to/don't think I should have to.

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