Some Thoughts as I Sit Here in Another Standup

No matter the effort put into explaining the ineffectiveness of these stand-up meetings, the core issue remains: they serve as a platform for middle managers to assert the authority they have long pursued. Rationalizing with this mindset proves difficult, and in the absence of these meetings, the roles of these managers -whom I refer to as ‘wranglers’- would be called into question. As a certified project manager myself, I can assert that the enforcement of these methodologies contradicts the principles of project management. Moreover, attempts to convey this perspective, especially from a certified individual to those who are typically not certified, often fall on deaf ears. Regardless of whether the approach is Agile or not, middle managers tend to transform these processes into the very shit show that is currently observed. .

I understand where the author is coming from and I’ll be the first to tell you that Agile/Scrum has become a monster, unrecognizable from the original goals. I’ve worked places where it’s treated like a religion (don’t question anything, just follow the system) and it quickly becomes a waste of time.

That said, I’m not aware of a better system than 1-2 week sprints where a team pulls in tasks from a prioritized backlog.

The author says something to the effect of “we are all adults here” but that makes me question where the author has worked. Almost everywhere I’ve worked there have been a few (normally minority) people who absolutely do not behave like adults. If you have a company full of self-starters who don’t need any checking-up on then maybe standups aren’t needed but even then, I find them useful (as in IC and as a manager) to keep up with what people are working on. Being fully remote it is useful for quick questions or an easy way to present a new idea/way of doing something. Yes we have Slack and async communication but let’s not pretend that they are complete replacements for hearing and seeing each other. Some ideas are harder to communicate over text.

Lastly I find sprints to be a way to protect the team from ever-shifting priorities from the business side. I’ve been places where the priorities change almost daily which can be stressful and leave you constantly uncertain of what you should be working on. Sprints help prevent that in my experience. Business can change priorities at their whim but the development team will only reevaluate them on a weekly/bi-weekly basis.

I’ll never say “this system is the pinnacle of software development” but it’s the best I’ve used, or at least better than anything else I’ve tried. But I’m always open to new ways to manage projects.

The standup and the sprint goal only make sense if the team is working towards a common objective, like 'this week we make the auth system of this new api'. That means everybody working together. If the sprint is a bunch of unrelated tickets from the backlog that each dev does on its own, then it is indeed unnecessary, and in theory you would be better with a simple Kanban.

>Unless you’re a gluten for punishment, you’ve probably never read it and so wouldn’t know that.

sp/ glutton. Interesting read...sadly i am living the same. Except we have coffee and 'treats', so the meetings last even longer as people can't decide what they want and then the meetings are constantly being interupted with people going for refills, and the gluttons pick at the treats. I hate it, so I just treat it as a pre-break break.

This sounded so familiar, I actually paused and looked at the blogger's name to see whether he was not an ex-colleague, perhaps. If had exactly the same experience with Monday (last day of sprint) that worked on my nerves so much that I could not pick up another ticket from the backlog because it will upset someone's burndown charts

Isn’t it cool how this could have been written like a decade ago and you probably wouldn’t be able to tell?

During standup (remote), when it's not my turn, I check job boards.

I work completely remote. Although I agree with authors points about the daily standup being useless I use it as an opportunity to get “face” time with the rest of my team and build comradery.

It's all that same it ever was: https://bit.ly/tisodeft

I heartily prescribe the programmer's manifesto to the author:

http://programming-motherfucker.com/