A cornerstone of micro-management, at best.
Daily stand-ups can work when there is no manager present and it's just the people working on what they need to get done.
The problem with bad stand-ups is usually that they're just "personal status updates" by another name. They're abused as a way for team lead/project manager to "get a feel" for what individuals on the team are doing. Bad managers do this, because they're bad at their jobs. It's literally their job to know what people are doing, where they're at in their various tasks, what's going on with the project. They should be doing that all day, every day - when they're not "managing up". Gathering info in a 15 minute standup is both too short a feedback cycle and too long and nowhere near high enough bandwidth. It's also one of the major reasons stand-ups frequently go off the rails and end up taking so long, in badly run projects. Stopping those derailments is actually supposed to be one of their jobs and should be one of their main priorities during the stand up.
If you're stand-up involves going around the team, one person at a time asking "what did you do yesterday, what are you doing today" - that's a bad stand-up.
Stand-ups should be run from the sprint board - you run through all open tickets for the sprint, asking whoever is assigned to that ticket "what's up with that?" Once you've gong the through the tickets, you're done. No looking forward to next sprint - that's for backlog grooming and planning sessions. No looking backward, that's for retros.
Don't get to talk during the stand-up? Then WTF are you even working on, and why isn't a story in the sprint? That's a question the manager should be asking and resolving - privately, outside of the standup.
Stand-ups are for "visibility of the team, for the team". Not for managers or other wanna be management.
Stand-ups are for telling your teammates "i unstuck this ticket this way, if that's an issue or there's a better way, hit me up after the standup" or "I'm going to be working on X and I don't know anything about that; anyone who can help me, hit me up after the standup".
If your stand-ups aren't like that they're bad stand-ups. Because your manager sucks. Don't worry - most managers suck. Deal with it, get over it; and stop blaming your tools.
Managers who insist on stand-ups, insist on being present in them, and insist on managing the the backlog of tasks, assigning tasks, and forcing developers to estimate each one... are micromanaging.
No amount of, "I'm the friendly manager you can trust!" is going to melt the ice that your presence, as a manager, brings into a standup. You control salaries, promotions, and the stress levels of everyone there. It's going to be a conflict every time some one pushes back on your demands. Everything devolves into a status update meant to save face rather than be honest. It's wholly a waste of time.
> Stand-ups are for "visibility of the team, for the team". Not for managers or other wanna be management.
I agree.
Standups are a whole different game when it's a group of developers with a goal who need each other to meet it.
A good manager trusts their team to do this work themselves. If that means standups, cool. If they only need to meetup once a week as a group and people meet impromptu based on what they're working on... fine. As long as the team is shipping and meeting it's goals and milestones, all gravy.
And the social pressure against saying “I didn’t do much” is tremendous, and it’s hard for anyone who cannot completely abandon worrying about what others may think of them to admit that, even if they have a reason to do so.
An actual progress report meeting 1-2 times a week is so much better.
Scrum might not be perfect for every situation but it's a damn sight better than a swirling miasma of agenda-less quasi-recurring meeting invites buttressed by orphaned Google Docs and Slack threads. I've worked on exactly one team where we pretty much did Scrum to the letter and it was great. Meetings were short and sweet and we always knew what we had to build or fix. I was just a kid and we were using a super-janky tech stack but it was among the most productive, low-stress times in my career.
_micromanagement_
Yesterday is history, can't change it, and it's documented in commit messages or bug tracker notes. No point in rehashing it for the group.
We report what I am planning for today and any blockers.
And some of it is not as timely as it could've been, because it was held back for the standup.
> Here is my attempt to improve such update:
> > Yesterday, I fixed a sidebar flickering bug.
> > Please review my PR soon as it is annoying for customers.
> > I started a video player story that we discussed at the last refinement.
> > Since it’s my first time working with the player module, I’d appreciate pairing up or any tips from someone familiar with it.
> > Today, my focus is on wiring up the play/pause functionality. Happy to sync after stand-up if anyone’s available.
But if there's a problem I already bring it up via online chat, and will at least get private messages from the extremely shy people (which is most of them).
One thing I’d suggest you try is to switch from people-centric to work-centric standup. Instead of going person by person, pick your rightmost “in progress” column and get an update on that issue. What’s needed? Who needs to help? That sort of stuff.
I find this moves through the standup fairly quickly and puts the focus on how to get things done. It also highlights when something isn’t clear for the team and you can follow up after.
A standup of this model goes something like this: what is the goal for the day? What support is needed to make it happen? etc.
[1]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/better-stand-ups/id163... -- skip to about 10:00 to hear the above.
• Status (good and bad — things done and left undone)
• Plans (incl. contingency plans)
• Uncertainties (untested assumptions, upsides/downsides, etc.)
• Reports? (e.g., document any agreements reached)
- what have you done
- what are you doing next
- are you blocked?
It works well, and any manager can see the output and follow up if needed.
> syncing plans and priorities for the current day
Most of the work developers do require syncing multiple times a day, either by slack messages, GitHub comments or pair programming, etc. Waiting for the daily to sync is not realistic and would waste tons of time.
> signaling blockers early so the team can help
If you have a blocker and you wait until the daily to mention it, you have a bigger problem. Blockers should be notified right away and most teams do this over slack or other messaging platforms they use.
> encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing
Teams are usually small, and if you don’t already know what someone is doing, you wouldn’t care what they have to say during the daily, and if you care what they have to say, you already know what they are doing.
> building a sense of team ownership and support.
Just go for a coffee break.
If you believe daily standups are useful, chances are you’re actually part of the problem.
They should but it doesn’t always happen. Having a stand up makes sure you can get that information into the open.
This holds for literally everything. You shouldn’t hold back conversations for your 1-on-1 but, if you don’t have them, you’ll find there’s a load of conversations you miss out on that you needed to have.
What are you up to today? Any blockers? What do you need help with?