I hate standups, but I also hate no standups since most people are unable to grab people and sync when needed. Currently my team has two morning meetings, first the forced full team one which is 100% useless since it's just status reporting and most people do not care what most people do. Then after that we have a sync between devs (we are 6 devs in my team). That's where useful things happen, we allow it to be a bit more than a standup, so we discuss issues, solutions etc and make sure backend/frontend is aligned etc. Anybody is free to leave if the topic doesn't concern them and this meeting usually runs 15-20min max, compared to the big standup that can run for 40min+ (yeah...).

A tech sync that is more than a standup, to allow for discussions, is the most useful way I know to align devs and make sure we are building things in a good way. It's something I usually advocate for, not because it's ideal, but because people are bad at syncing/discussing spontaneously thoughout the day.

Posted in October 2023, 26 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37894676

This was a fun read. I would amend the title to change "Agile" to "Scrum".

I was going to disagree but last chapter is basically what I was going to write.

So I do agree with author- only that whole introduction and language seems unnecessary .

I am feeling uncomfortable emotions for an unknown author on the Internet.

I love this person. Will read his blog and subscribe to it asap.

I found this article hilarious, been a while since I had a read like this that was written so effectively. Thanks!

OP, you're a whiny child yourself. The one thing that won't do anybody any good is infantile rage, except sadists might get some fleeting satisfaction from watching you suffer.

I've been a part of daily standup routines that were somewhat useful and some that weren't. Even in a good one, where some useful exchanges happen, most of the time is still wasted on irrelevant stuff. Best suggestion I have is to let each person speak if they have something to say, and otherwise we move on. Having the opportunity, with everyone present, is useful I think.

This does not strictly follow the formulaic Agile Standup, but agile is about "people over process" anyway, so you can tell that to the Agile Coach.