Saw this post on LinkedIn. Maybe it’s just been my experience, but I feel like it’s weird to feel stressed out about standup. It’s not supposed to be a high stress scenario. Granted, I’m the PM. But I’m also rather reasonable. What do you all think? I’d love to know if you’re a product or tech person.
I cancelled stand ups when I took over my role.
The only update you really should need to share is whether you're blocked or need anyone's help or input. The others are there on the task board of the team's choice.
Yeah
Very true, and at that point it should just be a slack message, not a daily meeting. Well, furthermore it shouldn't even be a daily status update. If you are blocked then you should figure out how to get unblocked right away, not waiting until the next standup to bring it up.
I'd be too embarrassed to say it publicly, but I agree completely with the linkedin post. isn't weekly/biweekly sprint planning bad enough? I feel like I have to explain where the complexity is that's making it take more time, and make it sound convincing or I just look like I'm making excuses. The worst is when the PM asks where the complexity is. Uh, it's in the part where I have to implement the feature instead of just writing down in a doc what I want the feature to do.
Well, I don’t blame the PM for asking about the complexity. I ask this question a lot because the higher ups ask a lot of pointed questions. I don’t underestimate the work required to get things done. I was a developer in a previous life, so I get it. I would personally be bothered by the attitude you have towards questions. Granted, your PM might suck and be a terrible communicator and diminishes your work, which would be terrible. But if one of my developers seemed bothered to explain something because it’s “harder than writing it down in a doc”, then I would be incredibly annoyed.
It's a pointless question, though. It's taking longer than expected because I'm unfamiliar with the codebase and I have to familiarize myself with it. Or because my dev environment is broken due to an infra issue outside my control. Or because it's taking time to write the code in a way that's not hopelessly inefficient. Or because there's just a lot of code to write. Or because my cat just died and I'm having trouble concentrating on work. What are you going to do with any of that information? The only reason a PM would need to ask is because they want to know whether it's actually a complex task or whether the engineer is just bad or lazy. But it's not their place to demand justifications from engineers. If they're unhappy with the speed things are going, they can ask, "would moving more engineers to this project speed it up?" and if so, help find resources, or they can express their concern to the engineer's manager. Just the way you talk, I can tell you're the type of person who does this type of presumptuous probing. "one of my developers" - they're not /your/ developers. They're peers, not subordinates, and they don't owe you an explanation. We don't care whether you're annoyed, it's not our job to manage your emotions. If you get annoyed because your peers don't treat you like you're their superior, that's something you need to work on yourself.
Stand up sucks and I agree to all the points that is listed in the post. Frequency should be adjusted to every alternate days at least.
I agree that daily doesn’t make sense. Two to three days a week is a far more reasonable cadence.
Also a lot of people have repurposed standups into an opportunity to over inflate what they actually do by droning on for five minutes about minutiae. I’m an engineer btw and hate standups for a lot of the reasons listed in the post
I also completely agree with this post. Daily stand ups are not needed. My team does one every other day but even that gives me anxiety
For developers who are not constantly pulled into multiple projects, standups are not stressful. But in a startup culture where they are pulled into different projects, it can be.
This is the key. If you’re on one project and have a quick daily call, it really helps keep the team in sync and focused. And it’s not as stressful because you can build rapport with the team — this is where being a cool team member comes into play. You don’t want to make your coworkers anxious, you want to be understanding and genuinely help them remove blockers.
This makes a lot of sense
Contrary to the popular opinion, if used correctly they can work well. At least they are not counter productive. To be less stressful, just make notes (one liners) every few hours, like a journal and just say that in a free form way. It’s a good way to know what’s happening in the team. Don’t see it as a competition of who says the most
Your last line will be a reflection of company/team culture
It never worked well in any of my teams. I am yet to see one example where everyone in the team thinks it's gone well. If you only listens to the manager or their pets, sure, if went very well. But opening your ears to the rest of the team and you'll see how it really went.
Most people treat standup as either a way to sound busy and important or anxiety to get over as quickly as possible. As a team lead I treat it as a way to identify duplicate or overlapping work, identify if someone is going down the wrong path, or anything that can help people be more efficient e.g by providing more context or setting up a follow up with the right people that a junior eng is too shy to do themself. No one really cares exactly what you spent your hours on yesterday or today.
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I hate standups
What do you hate about them?
I just dislike standups in meeting form, it can easily be async in a daily slack thread. No problem with them in general, I don't really relate to the anxiety thing, even if I didn't get shit done the day before I just say I am still finishing up with whatever my current assignment is.