Comment by onemorepassword | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onemorepassword | Hacker News Reader

onemorepassword

This guy is seriously suggesting replacing stand-ups with management and paperwork? There's something very wrong here, but that was already clear from the objections.

"30 minutes", "action points", "notes", "weekly update"?

Seriously, I know that "you're not doing it right" is the standard lame excuse from Scrum-evangelists, but this paints a picture of doing pretty much the opposite of Scrum.

Especially the emphasis placed on the "weekly update" is a big red flag, suggesting this team is doing something that isn't even close to being Agile. Agile and Scrum are supposed to be about delivering working software, and in the case of Scrum it's strictly time boxed. Weekly updates suggest micro-management and/or not delivering anything shippable.

Only the 10:00 versus flex time is a genuine issue. We have a very simple solution for that: if you can't be there, mail it in (or use HipChat). Yes, this also applies to people who start early and are deep in the zone by 10am. It's not supposed to be a two-way conversation anyway, just quickly syncing up.

This is exactly how we do things where I work. We're a pretty big team (about 12) and our standups are finished in 10 to 15 minutes. It's strictly time-boxed and we don't go over.

If you can't make it, we have a phone set up in the middle of the table for people to call in, or you can email someone on the team and they will say your standup for you.

If this works for you it's awesome, congrats. But what I saw in the past (3 different companies) was more like 30m+ standups, because most people (funny enough especially project managers) tend to talk way too much during standups. Unfortunately.

Our team made Take-It-Offline flags that we'd wave whenever someone started going off track during standup. The change was immediate, standup time was cut in half. Now people don't even bring their flags, we just raise our hand or quietly say, "TIO!" Once standup's over, those that had items to TIO stick around and talk about them.

> project managers

There's your problem. That role is the antithesis of a self organising team. With someone responsible for "managing" that stand up turns into a very expensive way to keep the manager briefed.

True.

Had the same experience. They can't help turning it into a status report, and think it's a good show to talk a lot. PMs and Agile are hard to mix.

In Scrum that's where the Scrum Master comes in. It's their job to facilitate the meeting to ensure that those conversations are continued after the meeting.

A good team will often find ways to achieve these things without requiring the Scrum Master to step in.

Right, and that doesn't surprise me. However, this isn't a problem with standups, but a problem with people not understanding the underlying concepts or just wanting to look good to the team.

*edit: missed a word

The scrum can be any time of the day that's convenient. At my last place we used to do one just before lunchtime. Definitely a good way to keep it short...

After experimenting with a bunch of different times, this is the best we'd found. Late risers have time to get in, people are hungry so it stays short, etc. Just start at noon minus however long you want the meeting to last...

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