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Comment by Desafinado | Hacker News Reader

Daily status updates are counter-productive, they create unwarranted pressure that leads to devs trying 'get it done' rather than trying to 'get it right'. In the long run, I don't think it helps with quality.

Beyond that, you're asking a bunch of (probably) introverts to have a social meeting every. single. morning. That couldn't possibly cause issues with job satisfaction could it?

I did scrum for the first three or so years of my career. In my latest role we don't, and it's a way, way better daily routine.

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I don’t understand your comment: if you develop software as a team, it seems important to communicate and to know what the others in your team are working on?

Also, I really don’t see it as ‘social’ meeting, to me it’s a focused technical meeting about the work that is going on.

Yes to communicating with each other and knowing what you're working on, no to doing it every morning. Once a week, every two weeks, or once a month is fine. Any integral communication that can't be handled by the recurring meeting, can be handled ad-hoc as you go.

But people who have only done capital A agile and scrum are so buried in the philosophy that they don't understand that there are far better ways to do things.

I'm not sure how that's supposed works if most team members are burning through 14 tasks or 10 tasks or 5 tasks in a two week period. If your tasks are two week chunks, then you're doing something else completely different.

Over a 40 year career I've done all kinds of methodologies. If you understand that there are far better ways to do things, I'm all ears.

The big advantage to agile/scrum methodologies in my opinion: dramatically improved predictability. Total elimination of drama. Efficient management of expectations outside of the development group. Never having to do a death march ever again.

Ok, I agree, if there is enough (ad-hoc) communication within the team, you don’t need those meetings every day.

Daily sync is helpful for new remote workers.

Only if you have not established a healthy async communication culture in your org. I'd say needing daily syncs to onboard people is a red flag that your remote org is not doing enough written communication.

Daily sync is good to get familiar with people and what they do.

Worked at 3 remote teams and the team without scrum I knew the least.

Having a 1:1 with everyone on your team when you start works better. Admittedly, few teams take the time to do that. But doing so sets up a remote culture where people will talk to each other outside of scheduled calls. Because remote daily syncs often generate thoughts of, "Nah, I won't communicate now... I'll wait for the call". And that both slows down communications and bogs down the daily calls.

So I'll stand by the statement that if daily sync is your solution, you are missing part of the puzzle.

Daily sync can be on chat instead of meeting. For new remote personel meetings, explicitly state and have those specifically for the benefit of new remote workers. E.g., tell the team you will be doing daily status as a team for a week for the benefit of the new person.

Is the goal to get it done or to get it done right, where “right” means the definition that the dev has in their head?

If things get done the way the business wants them to get done, shouldn’t the people who dislike the meetings be dissatisfied with their job?

Sounds like your daily standups were far more dramatic than they need to be.

I completed this task (or not). I'm working on this task. Any other discussions take place outside the meeting. Short. Sweet. No pressure. No drama required.

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