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I also noticed this. We came up with a variant to fix this. You have to say what the next person in the circle said they'd do yesterday before your talk. This
by andy_boot 7y ago
I also noticed this.
We came up with a variant to fix this. You have to say what the next person in the circle said they'd do yesterday before your talk.
This forced everyone to pay more attention as you don't know who would be standing next to you tomorrow. It wasn't easy to do but I think it did make people more aware of what was going on.
- djKianoosh 7y agowow this would suck in a 20 person standup
- TomMarius 7y agoWhy would you have 20 person standups?
- djKianoosh 7y agobecause government project? although I imagine this happens in non-gov settings too, this is just my experience. Here's the reason: managers are so spread thin that they don't want to be in 5-10 standups all morning, so they combine around organizational structures rather than product(s)/deliverable(s). Another case of the software delivery matching org structure...
- TomMarius 7y agoOf course the next question in line is "why is a manager involved in the standup?" > because government project? although I imagine this happens in non-gov settings too, this is just my experience. Why not split into smaller work groups? What's the advantage of 20 person teams?
- djKianoosh 7y agoorganically this is what happens to actually get things done. but mind you, these small work groups are successful despite the large standups. life finds a way...
- bmcfeeley 7y agoI know we tend to have little control over this as ICs, but I think the party line here is that 20 is too many people to effectively make use of most agile/scrum ceremonies. Do you actually need to know all 19 other persons’ updates?
- djKianoosh 7y agoIndividuals don't, but the managers, who may be well meaning, feel the need to.
- matthewmacleod 7y agoLiterally everything would suck in a 20 person standup.
- djKianoosh 7y agocan confirm
- dragonwriter 7y agoWell, yes, a 20 person standup is a little more than twice the maximum size conventional wisdom holds is appropriate, so it is going to suck to start with and much advice for normal 5-9 person stand-ups will be counterproductive and make it worse.
- philbarr 7y agoThis sounds horrendous. It doesn't really feal like it would achieve much either except making standups even harder.
- drewcoo 7y agoWhy is this voted down? Stand-ups are supposed to be about increased team cohesiveness and this helped their team achieve that.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 7y agoThis is a terrible approach for the fact that instead of addressing the problem of people not listening because of stuff not relevant to them said from others, it ensures you must listen to that irrelevant stuff. So instead of wasting some people time, you are now wasting 2x that time. Make the meeting relevant to everyone, make it tight (time-wise). Hiding the problem under a tarp ensures it doesn't get any improvements.