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Discussion on: Do we need standup?

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avalander profile image
Avalander • Edited

Yep, I totally agree with that. As a developer, I wouldn't want to work with a team that doesn't do stand ups.

I applaud anybody who experiments with their process, tries different approaches and doesn't do something only because everybody else is doing it. But then I get sad when they write articles titled you don't need x meeting and make their point with a paragraph like this:

Standup has always bothered me. It usually serves to interrupt developers, make them feel pressured to prioritize features over tech debt, and has been known to last longer than 1/2 hour.

Many people think that having a meeting is as easy as opening your calendar tool, writing a title, adding a few people and sending out the invite. If the meetings are not properly planned, structured and facilitated, and the participants don't understand what is the agenda, the purpose and the expected outcome of a meeting, it is most likely going to be a waste of time. But the problem is not that you're having the meeting, the problem is that the way you do the meeting sucks.

Stand ups are not going to work out of the box if nobody around knows how to actually run a good stand up, but once you figure them out, they are really helpful. I've joined many teams with awful stand ups. None wanted to ditch stand ups after we added some structure and started asking the right questions, and many of them agreed that they were possibly the most helpful part of their process.