I teach this stuff. I am also not a process wonk. In fact, I'm just a coder. I help teams because as a coder I've seen hundreds of teams in dozens of industries. All I care about is what works.
And standups fascinate me. I have seen teams that were communicating horribly -- one guy would go off and work by himself, one person struggled with some new tech but couldn't admit it, one person was too shy to talk about his problems. You get them doing standups well and suddenly these things start to work themselves out.
But the really crazy thing is that those same teams, when things start working out? Many times the same members will leave the standup going "Geesh. What a waste of time."
It's like when you're inside a standup you can't see it working. Very weird.
I agree with most every point the author makes here. I do not, however, agree with the conclusion.
Communication in a team is a completely different type of thing than programming or math. It's not just the movement of data around. It's a social thing. There are no red lights that go off or alarms that flash if you're doing communication poorly. Everybody just keeps working as if communication was going along fine. So it's not something you can do, inspect to see how it's working, then adapt. The feedback loop is too subtle.
So standups end up being something akin to brushing your teeth. You do it daily -- sometimes multiple times daily -- because over the long run folks have observed that you'll be much happier. You do not brush your teeth and then go "Wow! I feel so great because I brushed my teeth!" Doesn't work like that.
If I had to toss out every piece of process BS I could, I'd probably keep standups, co-location, and mob/pair programming. Some kind of kanban/story board and TDD/ATDD would come a close second, but only under certain circumstances (commercial software work, more than 2 folks, etc) In general you add in stuff as your project grows more complex, but standups are pretty useful even if it's just you and another coder talking over the phone every day at 9.
One nit with the article. In it he says that the third part is "What impediments have you encountered?" I prefer to phrase this as "Is there anything we can help you with?" People have problems when they work. What I'm really want to know is "Have you taken some time to think about whether other folks on the team can help you with anything? Because that's what we're here for". Yes, you should be doing this constantly. No, people do not do this constantly because they get their head stuck in their work and need a moment to look at the other guys and reflect.
And standups fascinate me. I have seen teams that were communicating horribly -- one guy would go off and work by himself, one person struggled with some new tech but couldn't admit it, one person was too shy to talk about his problems. You get them doing standups well and suddenly these things start to work themselves out.
But the really crazy thing is that those same teams, when things start working out? Many times the same members will leave the standup going "Geesh. What a waste of time."
It's like when you're inside a standup you can't see it working. Very weird.
I agree with most every point the author makes here. I do not, however, agree with the conclusion.
Communication in a team is a completely different type of thing than programming or math. It's not just the movement of data around. It's a social thing. There are no red lights that go off or alarms that flash if you're doing communication poorly. Everybody just keeps working as if communication was going along fine. So it's not something you can do, inspect to see how it's working, then adapt. The feedback loop is too subtle.
So standups end up being something akin to brushing your teeth. You do it daily -- sometimes multiple times daily -- because over the long run folks have observed that you'll be much happier. You do not brush your teeth and then go "Wow! I feel so great because I brushed my teeth!" Doesn't work like that.
If I had to toss out every piece of process BS I could, I'd probably keep standups, co-location, and mob/pair programming. Some kind of kanban/story board and TDD/ATDD would come a close second, but only under certain circumstances (commercial software work, more than 2 folks, etc) In general you add in stuff as your project grows more complex, but standups are pretty useful even if it's just you and another coder talking over the phone every day at 9.
One nit with the article. In it he says that the third part is "What impediments have you encountered?" I prefer to phrase this as "Is there anything we can help you with?" People have problems when they work. What I'm really want to know is "Have you taken some time to think about whether other folks on the team can help you with anything? Because that's what we're here for". Yes, you should be doing this constantly. No, people do not do this constantly because they get their head stuck in their work and need a moment to look at the other guys and reflect.