Wade HarshmanScrum Master| GDITIndianapolis, In, United States
Dec 12, 2019 4:30 PM
Replying to Adrian Carlogea
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The problem with the daily standups is that they put pressure on the team members, especially on developers.
Each developer works on his own tasks so most of the times there is absolutely no benefit for him to know what the others are doing, there is no need for any "alignment".
However if the developer doesn't come with substantial progress at each standup he can get in trouble, specially if managers take part in the meetings.
Because of the daily standup many developers do a sloppy job just to be able to report progress each day and that's one of the reasons that the software developed with Scrum is buggy and has a lot of technical debt.
Even if you don't use the standup to put pressure on the team members and punish those that don't report a lot of progress I believe that this "tool" is extremely inefficient in helping the team to perform better.
While it has no benefit for the team it is loved by project managers and managers because PMs can get easier the status report while the real managers can use the daily standup to asses the performance of their direct reports. Obviously the performance evaluation will not be accurate but for managers it looks easier.
Adrian, this is exactly what I meant in my earlier reply when I said there's something wrong with the standup. Standups or Scrums are not status meetings. It's a chance for the team to discuss their work.
Admittedly, there are days when each person on my team is doing independent work, and the scrum seems like a waste of time (although our standups are succinct so we don't waste much time). More often than not, however, their work is somehow related, and they will either have questions for one another or have some impediment to their work that I can assist them with. Occasionally, we avert a minor disaster because team member A didn't realize team member B was about to do something, and team member B didn't realize her work impacted team member A.
Your other reply saying that everyone has to have a standup because management commanded it and the team must follow orders suggests that the organization has other issues. If the organization doesn't trust their project teams, then agile frameworks like scrum aren't going to work.
I don't have any magic formulas for fixing standups, but I would recommend removing anyone who isn't on the team. Your standup doesn't need a jury. Observers create a Hawthorne Effect; your team needs a place where they can speak openly. If your stakeholders want a daily status report, give it to them yourself.
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1 reply by Adrian Carlogea
Dec 13, 2019 5:52 PM
Adrian Carlogea
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"Occasionally, we avert a minor disaster because team member A didn't realize team member B was about to do something, and team member B didn't realize her work impacted team member A."
That's why you need a technical lead or architect that has a broad view of the entire solution and understands the interdependence of the tasks. At the beginning of each work session or sprint the lead has to work with the team through the requirements and determine the actual tasks to be completed and then assign the tasks to the team members.
Giving small chunks of requirements to a group of people and expect them to collaborate between them and do it is inefficient and hard to accomplish.
But anyway in my opinion the team should be let to decide how it wishes to communicate and you should not force stand ups but instead let the team decide.
I don't know about Agile in general but I find Scrum very rigid not allowing the team members to decide how to work. Is quite the opposite of what it claims to be. At least this is my opinion.
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MAURICIO B. MEJIA S.C.Project Manager| ARCOSA / MEYER Utility StructuresFort Worth - TX, United States
When managing a portfolio of 40+ projects, how healthy is a daily stand up or huddle to give a quick report on status, when you are pulling into the meeting the entire team of engineers, modelers and PMs ??
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1 reply by Kiron Bondale
Dec 13, 2019 10:19 AM
Kiron Bondale
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Mauricio -
A daily standup is for a team of 12 folks. If you have a portfolio of projects, you might use a "Scrum of Scrums" approach for the projects which are interrelated but for those that are independent you wouldn't include them as the meeting is not for status sharing but for coordination & micro-planning (for that day).
When managing a portfolio of 40+ projects, how healthy is a daily stand up or huddle to give a quick report on status, when you are pulling into the meeting the entire team of engineers, modelers and PMs ??
Mauricio -
A daily standup is for a team of 12 folks. If you have a portfolio of projects, you might use a "Scrum of Scrums" approach for the projects which are interrelated but for those that are independent you wouldn't include them as the meeting is not for status sharing but for coordination & micro-planning (for that day).
Philosophical question - can a rigid framework be considered agile?
I'm reminded of a point from the digital business transformation management training I just completed - it recommended that companies adopt a standard process for innovating. On the surface, it seems contradictory, but it does make sense.
Likewise, when you consider what standups are for, being rigid does make sense. It's not a daily status meeting; it's an opportunity to quickly discuss progress and determine if there are any impediments that need more time and attention. You're not solving problems in the standup. Nobody is held captive for 20 minutes waiting to report out on their progress listening to problems that they don't care about.
That being said, I don't completely agree with the idea that if you are not following the scrum guide, to the letter, then you are not doing scrum. One of the key tenets of scrum is learning and adapting. Why do teams hold retrospectives? To see what is working well and what needs to change. If the team decides (because the scrum master only guides) to hold standups three days a week, and they try it for a sprint and it works so they keep doing it, I would argue that scrum is working the way it is supposed to. There should be some room for variation within certain limits.
If the team decided to hold long status meetings instead of short standups, I would agree that they are stepping away from scrum.
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2 replies by Kiron Bondale and Wade Harshman
Dec 13, 2019 12:30 PM
Kiron Bondale
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Simple answer - no. Prescriptive frameworks forget the first value statement in the Manifesto: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
That is one of the benefits of the DA toolkit - it provides choice to teams within the constraints of enterprise standards & policies.
Kiron
Dec 13, 2019 12:55 PM
Wade Harshman
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I'm going to say yes, a rigid framework can still be an agile framework, (I give this answer at great risk, because I've already seen Coach Kiron's answer. But I base my answer on the term "framework.") Scrum calls itself a "framework" for a reason. As we often have to remind people on this forum, Scrum is not a project management methodology. It doesn't prescribe how everything must be done. It's intentionally open to fit a wide variety of teams and adapt over time.
However, there are a few rules and values that define Scrum, and though the framework is minimal, it is is rigid. Fred Brooks says "Form is liberating," meaning that discipline and creativity compliment one another.
To return to the original question, dropping the daily stand-up doesn't make you a bad team, and it doesn't mean you're not agile. By definition, however, you aren't using the Scrum framework if you don't have scrums. You're simply doing something different.
I know that the stand up is not meant to be used for reporting or for putting pressure on the team members.
However when you are asked each day what you have done in a short period of time then it is impossible not to feel some pressure. If you don't report substantial progress that this will be raised as an issue and depending on the organization you may end up in trouble as you may be labelled as a low performer.
Also the daily stand up offers a big opportunity for reporting and that's why it is loved by PMs.
The potential for reporting and putting pressure is huge and many organization would not loose the opportunity making the life of the Scrum team members a nightmare.
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2 replies by Sergio Luis Conte and Stéphane Parent
Dec 13, 2019 11:41 AM
Stéphane Parent
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A couple of things come to mind, Adrian.
First, work should be sufficiently granular to complete between stand-up meetings. I like to break down stories until they fit in a single day.
Second, you've got bigger problems than stand-up meetings if your organization is "making the life of the Scrum team members a nightmare".
Dec 13, 2019 12:11 PM
Sergio Luis Conte
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That is not the question to ask. That´s the problem if people ask that. I can write a lot here but my recommendation for people that select to follow Scrum as the framework that will help to create the solution which address the client needs take a closer look and realy undersand what mean to perform daily stand ups. The problem is lot of people talk about they realy know about it but in the fact, in the practice, those people demostrate they have no knowledge about that.
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Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Dec 13, 2019 11:27 AM
Replying to Adrian Carlogea
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Sergio,
I know that the stand up is not meant to be used for reporting or for putting pressure on the team members.
However when you are asked each day what you have done in a short period of time then it is impossible not to feel some pressure. If you don't report substantial progress that this will be raised as an issue and depending on the organization you may end up in trouble as you may be labelled as a low performer.
Also the daily stand up offers a big opportunity for reporting and that's why it is loved by PMs.
The potential for reporting and putting pressure is huge and many organization would not loose the opportunity making the life of the Scrum team members a nightmare.
A couple of things come to mind, Adrian.
First, work should be sufficiently granular to complete between stand-up meetings. I like to break down stories until they fit in a single day.
Second, you've got bigger problems than stand-up meetings if your organization is "making the life of the Scrum team members a nightmare".
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1 reply by Adrian Carlogea
Dec 13, 2019 1:23 PM
Adrian Carlogea
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I am not an expert in Agile/Scrum but I don't think User Stories can be broken into smaller ones or if they can I don't this is a good idea. User stories in my understanding refer to the user functionality as they represent the user's requests/requirements.
I thought that for each story you can create tasks and those tasks can be split into smaller ones. I think this is what you meant.
Defining the tasks is the duty of the developers/technical experts as only they have the knowledge to accomplish this. At some point however tasks can't be split more or they can but it would be inefficient. Depending on the requirements(User Stories) tasks can't always be split so that they can be completed in ore day.
Asking a developer to decompose his work into very small chunks so that each chunk can be completed in one day and then asking him each day to report the progress of the small task is indeed a nightmare for me, an extreme form of micro-management.
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Dec 13, 2019 11:27 AM
Replying to Adrian Carlogea
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Sergio,
I know that the stand up is not meant to be used for reporting or for putting pressure on the team members.
However when you are asked each day what you have done in a short period of time then it is impossible not to feel some pressure. If you don't report substantial progress that this will be raised as an issue and depending on the organization you may end up in trouble as you may be labelled as a low performer.
Also the daily stand up offers a big opportunity for reporting and that's why it is loved by PMs.
The potential for reporting and putting pressure is huge and many organization would not loose the opportunity making the life of the Scrum team members a nightmare.
That is not the question to ask. That´s the problem if people ask that. I can write a lot here but my recommendation for people that select to follow Scrum as the framework that will help to create the solution which address the client needs take a closer look and realy undersand what mean to perform daily stand ups. The problem is lot of people talk about they realy know about it but in the fact, in the practice, those people demostrate they have no knowledge about that. Saving Changes...
Philosophical question - can a rigid framework be considered agile?
I'm reminded of a point from the digital business transformation management training I just completed - it recommended that companies adopt a standard process for innovating. On the surface, it seems contradictory, but it does make sense.
Likewise, when you consider what standups are for, being rigid does make sense. It's not a daily status meeting; it's an opportunity to quickly discuss progress and determine if there are any impediments that need more time and attention. You're not solving problems in the standup. Nobody is held captive for 20 minutes waiting to report out on their progress listening to problems that they don't care about.
That being said, I don't completely agree with the idea that if you are not following the scrum guide, to the letter, then you are not doing scrum. One of the key tenets of scrum is learning and adapting. Why do teams hold retrospectives? To see what is working well and what needs to change. If the team decides (because the scrum master only guides) to hold standups three days a week, and they try it for a sprint and it works so they keep doing it, I would argue that scrum is working the way it is supposed to. There should be some room for variation within certain limits.
If the team decided to hold long status meetings instead of short standups, I would agree that they are stepping away from scrum.
Simple answer - no. Prescriptive frameworks forget the first value statement in the Manifesto: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
That is one of the benefits of the DA toolkit - it provides choice to teams within the constraints of enterprise standards & policies.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Wade HarshmanScrum Master| GDITIndianapolis, In, United States
Dec 13, 2019 10:41 AM
Replying to Aaron Porter
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Philosophical question - can a rigid framework be considered agile?
I'm reminded of a point from the digital business transformation management training I just completed - it recommended that companies adopt a standard process for innovating. On the surface, it seems contradictory, but it does make sense.
Likewise, when you consider what standups are for, being rigid does make sense. It's not a daily status meeting; it's an opportunity to quickly discuss progress and determine if there are any impediments that need more time and attention. You're not solving problems in the standup. Nobody is held captive for 20 minutes waiting to report out on their progress listening to problems that they don't care about.
That being said, I don't completely agree with the idea that if you are not following the scrum guide, to the letter, then you are not doing scrum. One of the key tenets of scrum is learning and adapting. Why do teams hold retrospectives? To see what is working well and what needs to change. If the team decides (because the scrum master only guides) to hold standups three days a week, and they try it for a sprint and it works so they keep doing it, I would argue that scrum is working the way it is supposed to. There should be some room for variation within certain limits.
If the team decided to hold long status meetings instead of short standups, I would agree that they are stepping away from scrum.
I'm going to say yes, a rigid framework can still be an agile framework, (I give this answer at great risk, because I've already seen Coach Kiron's answer. But I base my answer on the term "framework.") Scrum calls itself a "framework" for a reason. As we often have to remind people on this forum, Scrum is not a project management methodology. It doesn't prescribe how everything must be done. It's intentionally open to fit a wide variety of teams and adapt over time.
However, there are a few rules and values that define Scrum, and though the framework is minimal, it is is rigid. Fred Brooks says "Form is liberating," meaning that discipline and creativity compliment one another.
To return to the original question, dropping the daily stand-up doesn't make you a bad team, and it doesn't mean you're not agile. By definition, however, you aren't using the Scrum framework if you don't have scrums. You're simply doing something different. Saving Changes...
First, work should be sufficiently granular to complete between stand-up meetings. I like to break down stories until they fit in a single day.
Second, you've got bigger problems than stand-up meetings if your organization is "making the life of the Scrum team members a nightmare".
I am not an expert in Agile/Scrum but I don't think User Stories can be broken into smaller ones or if they can I don't this is a good idea. User stories in my understanding refer to the user functionality as they represent the user's requests/requirements.
I thought that for each story you can create tasks and those tasks can be split into smaller ones. I think this is what you meant.
Defining the tasks is the duty of the developers/technical experts as only they have the knowledge to accomplish this. At some point however tasks can't be split more or they can but it would be inefficient. Depending on the requirements(User Stories) tasks can't always be split so that they can be completed in ore day.
Asking a developer to decompose his work into very small chunks so that each chunk can be completed in one day and then asking him each day to report the progress of the small task is indeed a nightmare for me, an extreme form of micro-management. Saving Changes...
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