Companies that don’t do daily standups?
The intent behind standup is to expose blockers and encourage communication, but all too often managers use it to micromanage engineers, who respond by listing as many things as possible to look busy. It wastes everyones time. Are there any companies that skip this process altogether, or at least make it less performative?
My teams don’t
Just daily updates on slack
I was once a part of a team where manager was not attending standups. We used to have short and effective standups. Good times.
My experience exactly. Standups were taking much longer than they should for a team of our size. Manager went on vacation for a week and suddenly we had the most efficient and effective standups ever. Wish we could return to those days 😥
Just post updates / blockers on hangout chat
Our manager doesn’t attend standups so we spend only 10 minutes on them.
We don't. Don't have to.
Most teams at Nintendo does, I dont. Better stuff to do, but expect to get spoken to about your burndowns. That's my trade off with the PM.
We don't. Are blockers really coming up every day? I would think it's part of the managers job to prevent that.
Agreed. And if a blocker does come up, why wait a whole day to bring it up at a stand-up? Bring it to the team's attention right away!
I feel standups are essential and managers should also be part of it. May be introduce a structure and tell team members to be brief and use a timer of 30 secs per member kind of thing. If there is a problem with manager micro managing may be there is less ownership in the team or manager might be nervous about meeting delivery. It is an opportunity for improving team spirit for meeting this current goal. If you are already on path of meeting delivery may be tell your manager to relax a bit and see if it will effect sprint velocity in anyway. The point is solve a problem with process in place. Also get to the root cause of each problem and find a solution that fits everyone. A retro meeting will be a good meeting to bring up this and discuss how you feel. Offcourse put it the right way so that it does not attack any individual.
Cisco