[HN Gopher] Small changes that made our daily stand-ups more useful
___________________________________________________________________
Small changes that made our daily stand-ups more useful
Author : dkoprowski
Score : 32 points
Date : 2025-08-05 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.progractivity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.progractivity.com)
| ok123456 wrote:
| Hitting dismiss and skipping it.
| dkoprowski wrote:
| Pro tip haha
| sda2 wrote:
| If I can't report on what I did yesterday in excrutiating detail,
| how will I justify my job and avoid layoffs?
| dkoprowski wrote:
| You can report on that, yesterday log can give the team
| important signals. It's mentioned there. I encourage to focus
| on planning and cooperation though. Mainly cooperation so even
| when reporting yesterdays work it's worth to emphasise things
| that impact others.
| neilv wrote:
| This improved update looks entirely like what could've instead
| been communicated asynchronously.
|
| And some of it is not as timely as it could've been, because it
| was held back for the standup.
|
| > _Here is my attempt to improve such update:_
|
| > > _Yesterday, I fixed a sidebar flickering bug._
|
| > > _Please review my PR soon as it is annoying for customers._
|
| > > _I started a video player story that we discussed at the last
| refinement._
|
| > > _Since it's my first time working with the player module, I'd
| appreciate pairing up or any tips from someone familiar with it._
|
| > > _Today, my focus is on wiring up the play /pause
| functionality. Happy to sync after stand-up if anyone's
| available._
| taude wrote:
| I used to run standups using a Slack plug-in, because my team
| was in several different time zones. It was really effective.
| We met once/week in a meeting....
| kerblang wrote:
| My team does this, with the only downside that people are
| unlikely to pay attention. It at least satisfies mgmt without
| getting the team bogged down for an hour.
|
| But if there's a problem I already bring it up via online
| chat, and will at least get private messages from the
| extremely shy people (which is most of them).
| scott_w wrote:
| If stand up takes an hour, there's some real issues there.
| I have the occasional one take longer but they generally
| last 5-10 minutes. Anything that needs discussion is taken
| to separate calls.
| CER10TY wrote:
| Props to you if you manage to follow this and squeeze it into 15
| minutes. I've genuinely never had a daily last less than 60 mins.
| taude wrote:
| Your team needs coaching, then. Unless you're getting status
| from 30 people....which would be a whole other conversation.
| CER10TY wrote:
| I'm long gone from that team (thankfully). But hey, the Scrum
| Master was certified, I'm sure it's all proper /s
| ramy_d wrote:
| that's insane. how many of you are there?
| CER10TY wrote:
| We were 5 people total - PO, Scrum Master, 3 devs. Been years
| since I was in that team but it was expected that everyone
| would give a lengthy update about the previous day
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That's 12 minutes a person. How much time did it take 3
| devs to say "I worked on 12343, I plan on working on 12354,
| no blockers"? I assume it was the PO/SM that drug it out?
| infamouscow wrote:
| Product managers shouldn't be rebranded as "solution
| managers." The title suggests they can handle solutions,
| but most lack the chops to solve real problems
| effectively.
| dkoprowski wrote:
| Yeah, we do this basically automatically right now, so it is
| fast. There are really rare cases when we would need more than
| 15 minutes. We do more serious stuff asynchronous over Slack or
| in a smaller round after daily with only affected people.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| We do something really similar to this and we're usually
| through 6 or 7 people in 15 minutes
| alexjplant wrote:
| "Scrum" is one of those terms like "jam band" or "martini" or
| "DevOps" that people apply way too liberally to describe things
| that _they_ think are similar but are actually completely
| different. If you try and get people to do real Scrum
| ceremonies and roles as written you 'll run into a host of
| excuses as to why they can't (or, as is more often the case,
| just don't want to). This is how you end up with a "daily
| stand-up" that only happens when Jupiter isn't in declination,
| is attended by between 0 and n + 3 people where n is the actual
| team size, and lasts up to an hour and a half with a strong
| possibility of not everybody giving their required status. Oh,
| and everybody is sitting down. At a stand-up.
|
| Scrum might not be perfect for every situation but it's a damn
| sight better than a swirling miasma of agenda-less quasi-
| recurring meeting invites buttressed by orphaned Google Docs
| and Slack threads. I've worked on exactly one team where we
| pretty much did Scrum to the letter and it was great. Meetings
| were short and sweet and we always knew what we had to build or
| fix. I was just a kid and we were using a super-janky tech
| stack but it was among the most productive, low-stress times in
| my career.
| Okkef wrote:
| I noticed that by asking my team a quick set of questions after
| our "good morning" virtual coffee corner helped them focus on the
| important stuff:
|
| What are you up to today? Any blockers? What do you need help
| with?
| dctoedt wrote:
| The SPUR Agenda can be helpful as a template:
|
| * Status (good and bad -- things done and left undone)
|
| * Plans (incl. contingency plans)
|
| * Uncertainties (untested assumptions, upsides/downsides, etc.)
|
| * Reports? (e.g., _document_ any agreements reached)
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| What I struggle with is that any blockers or delays that I may
| have, I've already signaled in our team chat.
|
| And the social pressure against saying "I didn't do much" is
| tremendous, and it's hard for anyone who cannot completely
| abandon worrying about what others may think of them to admit
| that, even if they have a reason to do so.
|
| An actual progress report meeting 1-2 times a week is so much
| better.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If I have stuff I didn't finish yesterday, I will usually just
| say "continuing work on foo" and if there was a blocker that
| delayed me I will mention that otherwise I don't get into
| reasons why, that's not really the point of a standup unless
| someone else can do something about it.
| scott_w wrote:
| And that's fine, just say so and who's helping you unblock it
| and move on. The stand up is to make sure nothing gets missed
| because the conversation that needed to be had didn't happen.
| agentultra wrote:
| > Daily stand-ups are a cornerstone of agile software development
|
| A cornerstone of micro-management, at best.
|
| Daily stand-ups can work when there is no manager present and
| it's just the people working on what they need to get done.
| dkoprowski wrote:
| In my setup there is no manager there, only me as a team leader
| but I'm also one of the developers at the same time.
| ls-a wrote:
| I agree. The best experience i had was with a startup that had
| zero video calls and audio calls were rare.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| We don't report on yesterday in standup unless it's about a
| blocker that was hit yesterday.
|
| Yesterday is history, can't change it, and it's documented in
| commit messages or bug tracker notes. No point in rehashing it
| for the group.
|
| We report what I am planning for today and any blockers.
| theboywho wrote:
| This is an example of when Daniel Kahneman said that people don't
| believe in something because there are arguments but believe the
| arguments because they believe in something. Here's why I think
| so:
|
| > syncing plans and priorities for the current day
|
| Most of the work developers do require syncing multiple times a
| day, either by slack messages, GitHub comments or pair
| programming, etc. Waiting for the daily to sync is not realistic
| and would waste tons of time.
|
| > signaling blockers early so the team can help
|
| If you have a blocker and you wait until the daily to mention it,
| you have a bigger problem. Blockers should be notified right away
| and most teams do this over slack or other messaging platforms
| they use.
|
| > encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing
|
| Teams are usually small, and if you don't already know what
| someone is doing, you wouldn't care what they have to say during
| the daily, and if you care what they have to say, you already
| know what they are doing.
|
| > building a sense of team ownership and support.
|
| Just go for a coffee break.
|
| If you believe daily standups are useful, chances are you're
| actually part of the problem.
| scott_w wrote:
| > If you have a blocker and you wait until the daily to say it,
| you have a bigger problem. Blockers should be notified right
| away and most team do this over slack or other messaging
| platforms they use.
|
| They should but it doesn't always happen. Having a stand up
| makes sure you can get that information into the open.
|
| This holds for literally everything. You shouldn't hold back
| conversations for your 1-on-1 but, if you don't have them,
| you'll find there's a load of conversations you miss out on
| that you needed to have.
| theboywho wrote:
| Having a daily standup might be encouraging people to wait
| until the daily to mention blockers, which could be harming
| your team all while you think it's working
| scott_w wrote:
| It could but the fact I see conversations on Slack and hear
| in stand up "person X is already helping me with this"
| suggests otherwise.
| scott_w wrote:
| I like the suggestion to look at the system status.
|
| One thing I'd suggest you try is to switch from people-centric to
| work-centric standup. Instead of going person by person, pick
| your rightmost "in progress" column and get an update on that
| issue. What's needed? Who needs to help? That sort of stuff.
|
| I find this moves through the standup fairly quickly and puts the
| focus on how to get things done. It also highlights when
| something isn't clear for the team and you can follow up after.
| pan69 wrote:
| My teams daily standups are focused around raising issues and
| blockers, not as an individual status update. Sometimes nobody
| raises their hand and after 2/3 mins we go our merry way.
| Sometimes someone raises something that ends up being a 15 min.
| discussion (if there were no other hands raised, raised hands
| have priority).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-08-05 23:02 UTC)