it absolutely makes no difference to me to have standups, yet still we participate in them...
- To see who's working on what, I just look at the board.
- To seek help when I get blocked, I send a message on Slack (or whatever) at the point that I need that help, not only at 9:30 AM
- To know who's blocked on what, just tune to Slack
Given the above and if you have the team discipline to make sure that tickets reflect the state of work. Why do we need standups then?
That time can be more targeted towards a meaningful discussion, but the industry seem to be blindly just doing that without giving it much deeper thought. It baffles me.
“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”
Doing standups for the sake of it is adherence to a process over the needs of you’re people.
Equally, a core principal of agile was always:
“The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.”
And I think it’s always worth considering if your truth is the same for everyone on the team. This is actually something I’d bring up in a review (assuming you have those too right?). If you all agree that notifying and handling problems in Slack is enough, that checking the board is sufficient the just do that? What is stopping you?
I would also look for actually data too back it up. How often are people blocked. How do they get unblocked. How long does that take. Etc. Gives you some insight into the reality of the situation and some ammunition to get things changed if you’re team isn’t really being agile and is just doing the corporate software eng dance.
- To see who's working on what, I just look at the board. - To seek help when I get blocked, I send a message on Slack (or whatever) at the point that I need that help, not only at 9:30 AM - To know who's blocked on what, just tune to Slack
Given the above and if you have the team discipline to make sure that tickets reflect the state of work. Why do we need standups then?
That time can be more targeted towards a meaningful discussion, but the industry seem to be blindly just doing that without giving it much deeper thought. It baffles me.