Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Are Daily Stand-Up Meetings More Productive?
__roo writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that an increasing number of companies are replacing traditional meetings with daily stand-ups. The article points out that stand-up meetings date back to at least World War I, and that in some place, late employees 'sometimes must sing a song like "I'm a Little Teapot," do a lap around the office building or pay a small fine.' Do Slashdot readers feel that stand-up meetings are useful? Do they make a difference? Are they a gimmick?"
Then you're doing it wrong. The standup should be for status and blockers only - if you need another meeting, schedule it during the standup.
Check your premises.
Dijkstra's algorithm is a good litmus test of somebody's programming and software development knowledge and experience.
Anyone with any formal computer science, computer engineering, or software engineering education will know it inside out. Even many people who studied mathematics or physics will be familiar with it. It's a relatively simple algorithm that's easy to explain quickly, but it also touches on a variety of important concepts, and is quite applicable in the so-called "Real World".
Many software development professionals see it as a not-so-secret secret handshake, so to speak. If you know what you're doing, you'll find explaining it trivial. If you don't know what you're doing, you won't be able to. It's a fast way to separate those who can do from those who just talk the talk.
To be a scrum master, you should have at least this minimum level of knowledge of the field. That's where the connection comes in. Seeing if somebody knows Dijkstra's algorithm is one of the most basic and effective ways of seeing if somebody is qualified to be involved with software development.
The reason we did a weekly standup meeting of 15 minutes was because people did not read those email, web announcements or what not.
Sure, you could force them to reply to mails or fire them if they didn't know or whatever. Sometimes however mails arrive at moments people are doing other things. I leave it out if they are important or not.
So a good solution was to TELL them in person what was important to us and listen what was important to them.
This did not mean that we would read each and every email we had send. What we did was pick 3 points that needed focus. This could be deadlines, major changes in procedures, drink after work, new projects, stats and numbers, announcements, ...
We held them in the kitchen, because that was where the coffee machine was. After a while you get pretty good at it and it can be done easily in 15 minutes.
Obviously it all depends on the size of group, the information you want to bring across and the way you bring it.
If you want several thousand people standing in line and yell at them how horrible they do their job, that might be a bit wrong.
I would say max 10 people in total. More needs to be split. It will not me magical. It will however cooperation and understanding.
Oh and no handouts, unless you can eat them. Just a short minute online for upper management. (Your staff is not going to read it. Otherwise you would not need those weekly meetings.)
We called them "Power Meettings". The time you do it depends on the goal of your meeting. Do you want to inform how you did? End of the week. What you want to do? Begin of the week. And no, no 9:00 meetings.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
How time flies.
Stand up meetings are terrible, they always felt to me like a bad version of an homage paid either towards communism or fascism. The feeling is akin to that of a komsomol meeting, and that's probably what hitlerjugend must have felt like, especially those, who weren't devoted followers, but those who only attended it out of sense of self-preservation.
Maybe this comparison is a bit too strong, but that's the first thing that comes to mind.
As to the merits of such meetings - these are always denigrating, and totally worthless, nothing of any value can really be discussed in them because they are not aimed at solving any particular problem, just a reminder that the ant-farm is still in operation for some ridiculous reason.
You can't handle the truth.
Meanwhile, in the real.world companies are deriving great value from less perfect code and cant accord to.commit their businesses to open ended and unbudgeted developmenta that may never end.
If you cant tell me when I start getting return on my investment in your software then I don't invest in it.