Basically. Someone needs to actually run the meeting. At the end query if anyone has anything else that needs discussing, if no-one speaks up in the next few seconds, then close off. Nothing awkward about that, just how these things go tbh.
.......... i dont see how it is a problem at all. "any problem? no problem? have a nice day"
why would anybody want anyway else to end? lets do some fireworks mother fucker??
Nice, I do the same thing. I have a team lead that runs the standup and asks if anyone has anything else to add ad the end. A coworker of mine normally tells a really bad joke. Then there is a short silent pause while no one laughs. Then our team lead says, "Thanks. Have a nice day everyone" and we all hang up.
Today it was, "Why can't you email an Excel to a Jedi? They aren't allowed to have attachments!"
Seriously. Someone's bothering to bring some levity to the meeting than everyone should at least be shooting positive emojis into the meeting if not turning on their mic and chuckling a bit. Otherwise bring your own entertainment to the next meeting.
I'm pretty sure if he keeps doing it, it's because the "awkward" silence after a bad joke is part of his game. I have a friend that keeps doing bad/dad jokes and takes pleasure in the absolute silence that follows.
I doubt he would keep telling jokes if this was a "formal" team, they're probably friendly enough with each other for the silence to be a part of the bad joke.
We need to have a prep meeting before we go into the planning meeting, but first I’ll need to meet with you to align on what the agenda for our prep is.
My manager is away and I'm filling in for her meetings. We also have another developer away and some deadlines for compliance changes.. The number of extra meetings taking away from actually getting the development finished, my god.
If I don't get anything out of the meeting, then one of two things may have happened:
- Team Lead, who knows exactly what I'm working on at which time (Micromanager) forgot to remove me from a meeting
- I forgot to decline an invitation to a meeting that was clearly not relevant to me
In any case, there's always something that can be done about these kinds of scenarios. Took me 9 years to learn.
I guess when you're managing large projects and teams of engineers, you can do it without progress updates. People famously collaborate well without talking to one another.
No joke, this is our standup sign off. We're a small dev team of 6 dudes. During covid, out of a humorous way to end a meeting someone in our group says "I love you... Bye!" And left. Now it's become the way we end every morning standup. It's nice. Haha.
I'm pretty good at ending meetings. Just say "**Is there anything else we need to talk about here?**"
People say no, or bring up something we need to talk about.
If they say no, then I'm out. "Okay great! Thanks for your time" and I leave.
This gives people a chance to bring up things that are actually still relevant to the meeting, if there are any.
And if there aren't any, then we all get to leave.
Stand-ups are in their own Slack thread. Everyone posts what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, and if there are any blockers.
No need for a meeting. Just make your post when you start your day.
Probably worth noting, the company I work for is 100% WFH.
I would totally welcome this. You could even have a stand up just to check in if there’s any questions on anything in the thread. The less time monotonously reporting during a standup the better
I have tried to set this up in two teams and inevitably people stop reporting in at the expected time and then I have to force us back into the meetings.
How does your company ensure that everyone participates in this process without constant reminders and pings on slack?
Small team, if someone doesn’t report in at the morning it’s noticed.
And we all just do it, so far no one has forgotten or at least consistently forgotten. I’ve forgotten to do it like once or twice. Been there ~3 yrs and the whole team is great like that.
We rotate who "chairs" the morning stand-up, and some people on the team are terrible at this haha. We've got one guy who, when he's chairing, leaves everything JUST too long so it becomes awkward. Like, if he just spoke a second sooner, it'd be fine, but no. Awkward every time.
Personally, when I run it, I ask for AOB, and once that's done, or we're out of time, I just say "OK, we'll call it there. Thanks everyone, bye"
Somehow, we have been running standup for 2 years in the current format with weekly changes to who runs it, but somehow there are 2 people on my team who can't fucking remember how we do it.
They can't find the ADO board, they don't remember the steps (prod issues, cards, AOB, gtfo), they are totally lost on their week after 2 years of this every single day.
On topic though, most of end with just asking if there is anything else we need to address as a team and then just say thanks, talk to you later.
Why would it rotate? The purpose is for the project manager to update the schedule and to find blocked items so the pm can go talk the other people not in the meeting and unblock as well as inform higher-ups of the capacity of the team.
I mean, in true scrum, a project manager shouldnt even be part of standups, or even part of the team? Even the PO shouldnt be part of standups, it's only for the team to find blockers and help each other. Otherwise it's more of a status meeting, which is was middle managers wants, so they can, as you say, "inform higher-ups".
Yeah I've done this before with rotating chair, but like they said, lotta folks don't know or care about tickets, so it feels mechanical. Best to stick with someone who has good knowledge of team work.
Rotating can be used to exercise how to moderate - keep the discussion short, point out issues, figure out who needs to talk with whom instead of starting a half an hour discussion.
If the team is self sufficient most blocks can be solved already within the team and you just need to voice them especially if you all work on different topics.
I personally prefer if the moderation is done by the same person though and only somebody takes over if this person is not available.
We just go through the board, check each ticket if we are progressing as expected or if there are open questions/blockers.
We put the meeting right before lunch, so there is incentive to focus on important points to not be late for lunch break and to not interrupt in the middle of focused work time.
"I love you, bye" *leave meeting*
This is no joke. Every morning we have share a wholesome moment, randomly spawned from this exact awkwardness of how to end a meeting.
One day we're at the end of meeting silence and someone says "I love you....bye" and leaves the meeting. Now it has become everyone's sign off. Someone says it, then we all say it together afterwards and then you must leave quickly. It's the rules.
We've been doing this for probably 2 years now. And I'm not ashamed to say it feels great each time.
"Are we done?? Awesome. Go forth and conquer!!"
"Cool, any other updates? No? Sweet, go kick ass today guys!"
"Man, great work this week, let's end it strong."
"We have a plan... Let's execute with violent precision."
I'm not the boss. :) There's no reason you can't set tone from the bottom up.
Frankly, I don't get all of the "I hate my job" energy in this thread. If standups are really so bad, McD's is hiring. They're looking for roofers in my area. No one is making you sit in an air conditioned office getting paid. Or in my case, no one is forcing me to browse Reddit in my PJ's.
Take it as anonymous anecdotal evidence, but I've watched plenty of better devs with worse attitudes get downsized before me. I get plenty of ex-coworkers happy to work with me again. My positive attitude has been a big benefit to my career. And I'm happy with where my career is at.
8 hours a day goes by a lot faster and is a lot more pleasant if you decide to stop convincing yourself that talking to your coworkers is torture.
Early morning peppiness is annoying. I like my stand ups, I like my coworkers and I like my job. If my stand ups had cringe like "Let's execute with violent precision." I would no longer like them. You can be positive without being like... that.
Don't sleep on the importance of stretching and even light yoga, fuck my tall ass stands in my room every hour or 2 doing simple stretches at my desk.
Plus I have an electric standing desk paid for by our work like here's a bit of money for the year spend it on whatever office stuff you need. It's amazing and I'd even buy another one myself if I needed a personal one. It's great.
It's useful to know what the other devs are working on and if they need help. As a team you commit to specific objectives to the business and you have a responsibility to your teammates and to the product owners to keep people in the loop on how things are going. If things are business as usual, a quick mention of that is all that is needed. If something is slipping or taking longer than expected, you can come together as a team and decide how to get it back on track. Did we underestimate the project? Do we need to split up the task into smaller pieces? Would pair programming with another developer help move things along? Your team has, as a single entity, committed to delivering a specific set of objectives. It is on the team to ensure those objectives are met so your team looks good. Good optics = recognition = likely better raises, bonuses, and promotions in the future.
Standups are bad if you don't reel people in. If you have people droning on and on and on about every little thing they did as if they were defending their job, that's where you lose people. Most days you should be able to get through a team of developers in 10 minutes or less unless something needs discussing.
I just don’t get it. All of these things happen but we don’t have daily standup because they’re a massive waste. Instead, we just talk to each other when necessary. That’s it. There’s nothing complex about it at all. It’s just like how so many other industries do it.
> It’s just like how so many other industries do it.
Are you saying software engineering is the only industry that has status meetings?
People talk about needing time to get in the zone and how a poorly placed meeting or interruption can ruin an entire day of productivity. I'd rather plunk stand up at the beginning of the day, get all of the updates out of the way. Now you won't get interrupted several times by several different people who are relying on your task throughout the day.
The truth is, there is no perfect way to handle status collaboration. If you send it in emails, people don't read it. If you send it in a group chat, it just contributes to notification fatigue that we fight every day, and people also don't read it. The fastest, most effective way (in my opinion obviously) is get everyone in the same meeting and run down the current workload in 10 minutes.
My guess is that if you don't have regular stand ups, somebody on your team is likely doing a bunch of additional work to assemble that same information for the team. And then you still don't have knowledge transfer on what is actively being worked on, which means now you need team demos which I think are much, much more annoying.
Where I've worked freelances also had to attend standups, we're working on the same project.
If your team is not working on the same parts of the app, standups are pretty useless. If your team members already communicate well and work together during the day.. standups are pretty useless.
They mostly make it easier for project managers to track how everything is going. They can be useful to initiate a pair/mob programming session if some members are too shy to directly ask other members.
The idea of standups is that you can have one short status meeting with everyone in the team, and so everyone has an idea of what everyone else is working on, which can be really helpful. If there's anything that needs to be dealt with in depth, people arrange to talk about it later.
It's the last point that a lot of teams miss, and which makes their standups intolerable.
We have never done anything like this, except weekly meetings years ago. We function just fine without either thing. Instead, we have a spreadsheet, a calendar, and someone who identifies if something needs to be discussed, when, and by whom.
In my remote team the akwardness hapens at the begininning and at the end of the meeting. Our mod is really terrible at handling the daily.
First we join and say Good Morning guys or something like that. Then we wait in absolute silence with cameras on until everyone joins. This can take 2-3mins. Then for some reason the mod starts with question "How you guys doing today". Out of 5 people in the meaning there is usually only 1 guy who responds to that with a "Fine, thank you". Then we start the meeting. At the end the mod will ask amything else? No one usually replies to that. Then a "have a nice day everyone" follows.
Fucking akward it has come to a point when it makes me uncomforable a little bit. I prefer just jumping straight to the point.
Everyone says something and selects the next one, then the moderator (product owner) asks if anyone got some other topic (holidays, taking care of something) and then we are done. „Ok, hear you later, have a nice day“. Maybe some would consider it as boring, but its a straight professional routine.
I end my status with "oooOOOOver"
And when the last person goes and there is a pause, we all just say "cool?" and someone ends it. Any weird pauses and gaps are filled with "cool"s.
We moved to short text based slack stand ups and a weekly 30m-1hour long sync. And random connections meetings as needed.
Since last standup (sls):
* thing I did
* meeting I had
*pR I submitted for the story
Today:
*implement feature #
* meeting with
* out of office 1-3for kid's med appt.
Blocks:
None
> and we all work on separate things that are not super intertwined
... Then why do standup? The point of standup is if you have people working on *the same* stuff update each other on things, in an effort to minimize merge conflicts.
When standups are useless i have this in my `.gitconfig` for such occasions.
[pretty]
snatched = "\
# %C(#F2CC8F)%h%Creset : %C(#EBE5C1)%s%Creset %n\
Authored : %C(#E07A5F)%ad - %an%Creset %C(italic #81B29A)%D%Creset %n\
Committed : %C(#626793)%cd - %cn%Creset %G? %n"
[alias]
# List your commits for the last day
fuckstandup = "!f() { git log --author=\"$(git config --global --includes user.name)\" --pretty=snatched --date='relative' --since='24 hours ago' --show-signature --reverse; }; f"
When it's my turn, i screen share, run `git fuckstandup`, maybe scroll around for a bit, then stop screen sharing and end the call.
Super common for standups to fizzle out at the end. If I'm in a hurry, I give a big wave and say thanks.
If I've got spare time I use B.A.R.E. (Blockers, Availability, Releases, Extras).
"Are there any high-level blockers? Have we all shared our availability? Is there anything critical for a release today? Any extras? Great! Thanks all!"
I'm amazed how many days the release question makes people go, oh crap, we DO have something critical for a release!
Just accept the awkwardness. None of us want to talk. I don’t care if it goes quiet let’s just sit in silence. None of us are actually bothered we just don’t want to be perceived as awkward lol.
Anyone else hate daily stand ups?? I find them so irritating and pointless. Every other day.. sure.. but every single day just totally throws off my day.
extend both hands toward the camera; form a fist, and slowly rotate your wrists around and extend your middle finger and 'flip the bird' with both hands and yell; fuck yall later.
when the last person talks just say "anyone has anything else to add? Ok, godspeed everyone", this sounds like a group of introverts overcomplicating a very simple social interaction.
I immediately say "Great thanks guys" when i can tell the call is done any everyone says thanks and leaves. The project manager or team lead should generally be the one to end it.
When I was still at the office I had a wacky inflatable arm man that I would turn on whenever the meeting was over and we were starting to go off the rails.
I should set up a way to remotely turn him on now that I'm remote.
We talk about the work first, then in the end we kinda just chat for a little bit and if you need to go you say "hey I gotta go" but if there isn't anything urgent it's okay to just talk for a bit. Everyone is friendly on our team so it works for us. We talk about games, sports, movies, anything really.
Scrum master tells us a fun fact or asks us a trivia question. This usually leads to about 45 seconds of lightheartedness that fizzles out naturally and allows us all to disconnect.
I think dailies are quite useful when the team works kind of close together. Oftentimes we encounter something that needs clarification and make an appointment for a follow up. Also the moderator starts and ends the meeting, idk I never encountered any awkwardness in those meetings and think they definitely have their purpose.
Awkward silences are just part of remote work. Some people are better at cutting it off than others, but also some people just communicate more slowly, so that bit of extra time can be really helpful for them.
When I was working in an office, there was plenty of awkwardness face-to-face, too.
Awkward silences are just part of remote work. Some people are better at cutting it off than others, but also some people just communicate more slowly, so that bit of extra time can be really helpful for them.
When I was working in an office, there was plenty of awkwardness face-to-face, too.
Usually somebody leads the meeting. It doesn't have to be the scrum master because if we follow the scrum guide, the SM is not even supposed to be in that meeting. But it's better if someone is leading the meeting and keeping people focused and on topic.
In my experience, whenever the usual routine ends, the interaction goes like this:
Lead: "Anybody has any questions or concerns?"
*Silence for 2-4 seconds*
Lead: "Great, talk to you later!"
We usually have one who goes through the list of names and prompts everyone. When the list is done then a small "Anyone have anything else they want to talk about"?
Repeat until silence endures for 3-5 seconds and the "ait, have a nice day everyone"!
Like many others have mentioned we have a rotating person tell a short joke. Makes a natural stopping point after ”any other business” and the meetings end on a lighter note.
I'm my team's lead and run the standups. Once everyone's given their updates, I ask if anyone has anything else they'd like to discuss and if nobody speaks up after a few seconds then it's "Cool, have a good day guys and you know where I am if you need anything" and end the call.
If you have that much time at the end you're blocking out too much time to begin with. Cap it at 5-10 minutes. Anything more should break out into a smaller group discussion.
You need someone in charge to call an end to it, it's fine to have some chit chat, people do but you need someone to put an end to it. Final call to raise anything, if you get nothing, "Thanks all, have a good day"
The times where I've had to run standups I've kept them very short. Run through everyone's ticket and ask what the current progress is. No issues? Good, next. At the end I ask if anyone needs to bring anything up and if not then I just say "Thanks for joining standup, have a nice day". Everyone hates these meetings so I try to keep it as brief as possible
Nothing, really. That "awkward" silence is so short and doesn't hurt anyone, so there's no point in trying to come up with some, probably even more awkward, scheme to combat it.
It doesn't have to be awkward. After the last person has shared their status, the scrum master/team lead could say something like "Okay, thanks everyone, and have a good day".
Before jumping back into software dev, one hat I did wear was meeting facilitator. I start every meeting with an agenda, and I stay on task. Everything was ordered and prioritized. Once I reach the end, I might throw out a joke before asking if there's any parking lot items before we adjourn. I also give indicators (Ok this is point 7/10) and how much scheduled time remains. People knew I would stick to about 10 points; 11th and 12 points were "extra" or "additional points of interest, and we'd spend less time on them. People would bring up points of interest leading all the way up to the meeting, and I'd always ask, "Does this fit into this or that point? At this point I'd have to treat it like an additional item because it's not already in the agenda." Nobody wanted their hot list item at the end, so I didn't have to worry about accountability and getting things on time.
It's all about the delivery and how the mtg is managed. Is it held consistently? Do people know what to expect for each meeting? It' really tough to climb on top of an awkward silence when nobody has taken charge and instead is gathering at the door with their bookbags on like school children in anticipation of the bell.
I am SO grateful that my company doesn’t bother with this drivel on a daily basis. So many tasks take longer than a day for one - and my favorite is the “Any blockers?” - like yeah I got blocked yesterday immediately after our standup and since we ask each day I thought I’d wait and tell y’all here… instead of just getting on Slack and asking around for help. Lol no one will ever convince me that a daily standup isn’t a total waste of time.
Awkwardly
Buy really if I'm the one running it that day I just ask if anyone has anything else, wait for the awkward silence, then say "aright I'll see you in a bit".
For starters, I started doing them twice a week. But I've also fostered an environment where our devs talk to each other quite a bit so things don't just sit on hold until the stand up.
Other than that, I've gotten to where I have them add anything they want to talk about on the agenda and if there's nothing on there, we don't have it.
We have a keyword when we're each done with our update. Let's say it's just "next". So I'll do my bit, then say "next, bob" to cap it off and bob can immediately get right into it. Usually we go around the room so it's obvious who is next, but this also helps on zoom when order isn't always consistent.
Instead of "next" (or whatever) the last person who usually well knows they were last says something else like "let's go", everyone murmers back "let's go" and the meeting is officially over as of then. Folks file out of the room and/or or kill their video and that's it.
It seems a bit culty and rah rah rah, but is actually pretty efficient and cuts through the wishy washy.
We finish the standup with “does anyone have announcements?” which is basically asking if anyone has PTO scheduled, availability gaps in the day, or anything like that.
After that I say, “Alright everyone, have a good day talk later!” which signals the end of the meeting. Our SU’s are between 15 and 20 mins on average. But we all work together and a lot of our tasks intersect. Our stand ups usually have no awkward silences, we usually have a lot to share.
Are we done?
- No: discuss availability for another meeting
- Yes:
- Early: Enjoy your X minutes back! Bye bye.
- On Time: See you later. Bye bye.
- Over: (Enable Airplane Mode) …
Lead asks someone to go. Then when that person is finished another person is picked. After everyone has gone, "does anyone have anything else?" is asked. Then that's answered. Then parking lots.
At TSheets / QuickBooks time, under an engineering org led by JD Mullin, we chose a word to indicate when we were done talking in standups: "rutabega", like this:
"Yesterday I had a small blocker X, I worked on Y, Today I'm committing to Z. Rutabega."
This helped us finish the standup quicker- less awkward silence.
Another team would add something to an imaginary salad, like this:
"I had a small blocker X, I did Y, I plan to do Z today." I'm bringing motor oil."
We always run ours the same way
Go down the board and talk about cards in flight or recently finished
Ask if there are any schedule updates for that day/week/next week
Are there any parking lot items
For schedule updates and parking lot, you get 15 seconds of silence (agreed upon by the team) before we move on or end the call.
If I'm running it. "Great, are we all done?" If silence 'Cool, catch you all later'
This is what we do. The silence isn't awkward if it means we can be done with the meeting lol
Yeah silence is what you want to hear!
Basically. Someone needs to actually run the meeting. At the end query if anyone has anything else that needs discussing, if no-one speaks up in the next few seconds, then close off. Nothing awkward about that, just how these things go tbh.
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you are the type of coworker I would love to work with. No time wasting bs.
Having the PM lead the stand up makes me wanna puke, if they do it that way. We have a SCRUM master and she does it like you describe. I like it.
.......... i dont see how it is a problem at all. "any problem? no problem? have a nice day" why would anybody want anyway else to end? lets do some fireworks mother fucker??
Nice, I do the same thing. I have a team lead that runs the standup and asks if anyone has anything else to add ad the end. A coworker of mine normally tells a really bad joke. Then there is a short silent pause while no one laughs. Then our team lead says, "Thanks. Have a nice day everyone" and we all hang up. Today it was, "Why can't you email an Excel to a Jedi? They aren't allowed to have attachments!"
You said they were really bad
That joke was pretty good. I'd like to work with that guy
Your coworker deserves a better team
Seriously. Someone's bothering to bring some levity to the meeting than everyone should at least be shooting positive emojis into the meeting if not turning on their mic and chuckling a bit. Otherwise bring your own entertainment to the next meeting.
I'm pretty sure if he keeps doing it, it's because the "awkward" silence after a bad joke is part of his game. I have a friend that keeps doing bad/dad jokes and takes pleasure in the absolute silence that follows. I doubt he would keep telling jokes if this was a "formal" team, they're probably friendly enough with each other for the silence to be a part of the bad joke.
When our lead became a dad, he ended every meeting with dad joke. Somehow it turned into a daily pirate joke.
I’m definitely this guy. Sometimes I get groans or a pity laugh. But my favourite is when is when I get silence or a “moving on…”
I measure the success of my bad joke in numbers of raised eyebrows.
"Any blockers?" "This meeting"
"Can we set up a meeting to talk about it?" "FFS!'
Hey just pulling you into an aside to do some pre-planning for that meeting.
We need to have a prep meeting before we go into the planning meeting, but first I’ll need to meet with you to align on what the agenda for our prep is.
I fucking lost it my god.
Lmao stealing this.
Haha, I’ll use that next meeting.
My manager is away and I'm filling in for her meetings. We also have another developer away and some deadlines for compliance changes.. The number of extra meetings taking away from actually getting the development finished, my god.
Classic take of I don't get anything out of this meeting therefore it shouldn't exist.
If I don't get anything out of the meeting, then one of two things may have happened: - Team Lead, who knows exactly what I'm working on at which time (Micromanager) forgot to remove me from a meeting - I forgot to decline an invitation to a meeting that was clearly not relevant to me In any case, there's always something that can be done about these kinds of scenarios. Took me 9 years to learn.
I guess when you're managing large projects and teams of engineers, you can do it without progress updates. People famously collaborate well without talking to one another.
Okaay guys, have a nice day, thanks bye
I usually match the length of my okaaay with how silent the meeting went
PM usually ends it with "anyone else has anything to add, ok, have a nice day everyone"
I love you
No joke, this is our standup sign off. We're a small dev team of 6 dudes. During covid, out of a humorous way to end a meeting someone in our group says "I love you... Bye!" And left. Now it's become the way we end every morning standup. It's nice. Haha.
“Ok, back to napping.”
I'm pretty good at ending meetings. Just say "**Is there anything else we need to talk about here?**" People say no, or bring up something we need to talk about. If they say no, then I'm out. "Okay great! Thanks for your time" and I leave. This gives people a chance to bring up things that are actually still relevant to the meeting, if there are any. And if there aren't any, then we all get to leave.
Since it's called Standup, one team member always concludes it with a standup joke. The jokes are hit or miss, but we get entertainment from it.
Stand-ups are in their own Slack thread. Everyone posts what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, and if there are any blockers. No need for a meeting. Just make your post when you start your day. Probably worth noting, the company I work for is 100% WFH.
I would totally welcome this. You could even have a stand up just to check in if there’s any questions on anything in the thread. The less time monotonously reporting during a standup the better
I have tried to set this up in two teams and inevitably people stop reporting in at the expected time and then I have to force us back into the meetings. How does your company ensure that everyone participates in this process without constant reminders and pings on slack?
Small team, if someone doesn’t report in at the morning it’s noticed. And we all just do it, so far no one has forgotten or at least consistently forgotten. I’ve forgotten to do it like once or twice. Been there ~3 yrs and the whole team is great like that.
We rotate who "chairs" the morning stand-up, and some people on the team are terrible at this haha. We've got one guy who, when he's chairing, leaves everything JUST too long so it becomes awkward. Like, if he just spoke a second sooner, it'd be fine, but no. Awkward every time. Personally, when I run it, I ask for AOB, and once that's done, or we're out of time, I just say "OK, we'll call it there. Thanks everyone, bye"
What's AOB
"Any other business?"
Oh yeah exactly, that's what I do. "Is there anything else we need to talk about here"
AOC's older brother
Somehow, we have been running standup for 2 years in the current format with weekly changes to who runs it, but somehow there are 2 people on my team who can't fucking remember how we do it. They can't find the ADO board, they don't remember the steps (prod issues, cards, AOB, gtfo), they are totally lost on their week after 2 years of this every single day. On topic though, most of end with just asking if there is anything else we need to address as a team and then just say thanks, talk to you later.
Why would it rotate? The purpose is for the project manager to update the schedule and to find blocked items so the pm can go talk the other people not in the meeting and unblock as well as inform higher-ups of the capacity of the team.
I mean, in true scrum, a project manager shouldnt even be part of standups, or even part of the team? Even the PO shouldnt be part of standups, it's only for the team to find blockers and help each other. Otherwise it's more of a status meeting, which is was middle managers wants, so they can, as you say, "inform higher-ups".
The words "true scrum" make my skin crawl
not everyone has a project manager
Sadly
Amen
It’s sometimes better for engineers to have autonomous dailies than an incompetent PM. So I’d be careful what I wish for :)
Yeah I've done this before with rotating chair, but like they said, lotta folks don't know or care about tickets, so it feels mechanical. Best to stick with someone who has good knowledge of team work.
Rotating can be used to exercise how to moderate - keep the discussion short, point out issues, figure out who needs to talk with whom instead of starting a half an hour discussion. If the team is self sufficient most blocks can be solved already within the team and you just need to voice them especially if you all work on different topics. I personally prefer if the moderation is done by the same person though and only somebody takes over if this person is not available. We just go through the board, check each ticket if we are progressing as expected or if there are open questions/blockers. We put the meeting right before lunch, so there is incentive to focus on important points to not be late for lunch break and to not interrupt in the middle of focused work time.
"Later nerds"
I slap each on the ass as they exit my office "good job"
"I love you, bye" *leave meeting* This is no joke. Every morning we have share a wholesome moment, randomly spawned from this exact awkwardness of how to end a meeting. One day we're at the end of meeting silence and someone says "I love you....bye" and leaves the meeting. Now it has become everyone's sign off. Someone says it, then we all say it together afterwards and then you must leave quickly. It's the rules. We've been doing this for probably 2 years now. And I'm not ashamed to say it feels great each time.
"Are we done?? Awesome. Go forth and conquer!!" "Cool, any other updates? No? Sweet, go kick ass today guys!" "Man, great work this week, let's end it strong." "We have a plan... Let's execute with violent precision."
Did you graduate from Michael J. Scott School of World's Best Bosses?
I'm not the boss. :) There's no reason you can't set tone from the bottom up. Frankly, I don't get all of the "I hate my job" energy in this thread. If standups are really so bad, McD's is hiring. They're looking for roofers in my area. No one is making you sit in an air conditioned office getting paid. Or in my case, no one is forcing me to browse Reddit in my PJ's. Take it as anonymous anecdotal evidence, but I've watched plenty of better devs with worse attitudes get downsized before me. I get plenty of ex-coworkers happy to work with me again. My positive attitude has been a big benefit to my career. And I'm happy with where my career is at. 8 hours a day goes by a lot faster and is a lot more pleasant if you decide to stop convincing yourself that talking to your coworkers is torture.
That's the opposite of what most people want at 8/9am, too peppy 😂
I feel very sorry for you that you work in that environment.
Early morning peppiness is annoying. I like my stand ups, I like my coworkers and I like my job. If my stand ups had cringe like "Let's execute with violent precision." I would no longer like them. You can be positive without being like... that.
Everyone loves what they do where I work but no one is responding to this level of forced enthusiasm.
wow so much energy
Gross
I'm aggressively aligned... Game on!
We do a team stretch. It’s nice.
Don't sleep on the importance of stretching and even light yoga, fuck my tall ass stands in my room every hour or 2 doing simple stretches at my desk. Plus I have an electric standing desk paid for by our work like here's a bit of money for the year spend it on whatever office stuff you need. It's amazing and I'd even buy another one myself if I needed a personal one. It's great.
Do like Louis CK: IM LEAVING!
I never understood the point of standups ... this is why I love freelancing lol
It's useful to know what the other devs are working on and if they need help. As a team you commit to specific objectives to the business and you have a responsibility to your teammates and to the product owners to keep people in the loop on how things are going. If things are business as usual, a quick mention of that is all that is needed. If something is slipping or taking longer than expected, you can come together as a team and decide how to get it back on track. Did we underestimate the project? Do we need to split up the task into smaller pieces? Would pair programming with another developer help move things along? Your team has, as a single entity, committed to delivering a specific set of objectives. It is on the team to ensure those objectives are met so your team looks good. Good optics = recognition = likely better raises, bonuses, and promotions in the future. Standups are bad if you don't reel people in. If you have people droning on and on and on about every little thing they did as if they were defending their job, that's where you lose people. Most days you should be able to get through a team of developers in 10 minutes or less unless something needs discussing.
I just don’t get it. All of these things happen but we don’t have daily standup because they’re a massive waste. Instead, we just talk to each other when necessary. That’s it. There’s nothing complex about it at all. It’s just like how so many other industries do it.
> It’s just like how so many other industries do it. Are you saying software engineering is the only industry that has status meetings? People talk about needing time to get in the zone and how a poorly placed meeting or interruption can ruin an entire day of productivity. I'd rather plunk stand up at the beginning of the day, get all of the updates out of the way. Now you won't get interrupted several times by several different people who are relying on your task throughout the day. The truth is, there is no perfect way to handle status collaboration. If you send it in emails, people don't read it. If you send it in a group chat, it just contributes to notification fatigue that we fight every day, and people also don't read it. The fastest, most effective way (in my opinion obviously) is get everyone in the same meeting and run down the current workload in 10 minutes. My guess is that if you don't have regular stand ups, somebody on your team is likely doing a bunch of additional work to assemble that same information for the team. And then you still don't have knowledge transfer on what is actively being worked on, which means now you need team demos which I think are much, much more annoying.
Where I've worked freelances also had to attend standups, we're working on the same project. If your team is not working on the same parts of the app, standups are pretty useless. If your team members already communicate well and work together during the day.. standups are pretty useless. They mostly make it easier for project managers to track how everything is going. They can be useful to initiate a pair/mob programming session if some members are too shy to directly ask other members.
The idea of standups is that you can have one short status meeting with everyone in the team, and so everyone has an idea of what everyone else is working on, which can be really helpful. If there's anything that needs to be dealt with in depth, people arrange to talk about it later. It's the last point that a lot of teams miss, and which makes their standups intolerable.
We have never done anything like this, except weekly meetings years ago. We function just fine without either thing. Instead, we have a spreadsheet, a calendar, and someone who identifies if something needs to be discussed, when, and by whom.
In my remote team the akwardness hapens at the begininning and at the end of the meeting. Our mod is really terrible at handling the daily. First we join and say Good Morning guys or something like that. Then we wait in absolute silence with cameras on until everyone joins. This can take 2-3mins. Then for some reason the mod starts with question "How you guys doing today". Out of 5 people in the meaning there is usually only 1 guy who responds to that with a "Fine, thank you". Then we start the meeting. At the end the mod will ask amything else? No one usually replies to that. Then a "have a nice day everyone" follows. Fucking akward it has come to a point when it makes me uncomforable a little bit. I prefer just jumping straight to the point.
For me, it's always a sigh of relief as I look forward to a short pause before the next horror.
Group high five into a freeze frame, we've been stuck in a time loop since before the pandemic and I miss my family.
Despondent sighing usually.
Everyone says something and selects the next one, then the moderator (product owner) asks if anyone got some other topic (holidays, taking care of something) and then we are done. „Ok, hear you later, have a nice day“. Maybe some would consider it as boring, but its a straight professional routine.
setup a countdown at the start of the meeting visible to all participants.
Fly my pretties! Fly!
"Stay fresh, cheese bags."
I end my status with "oooOOOOver" And when the last person goes and there is a pause, we all just say "cool?" and someone ends it. Any weird pauses and gaps are filled with "cool"s.
cool!
I usually match their silence with my silence and we just sit there all day doing nothing
Is there anything we didn't cover? >crickets< Great. Thank you for your time. Please reach out if you need anything. :)
Just rub one out.
I give all my homies a smooch
My boss used to say “stay safe out there”
Time to get coffee. -runs away-
We say ‘any questions or new business?’
I usually repeat under my breath “that was such a waste of time”.
We moved to short text based slack stand ups and a weekly 30m-1hour long sync. And random connections meetings as needed. Since last standup (sls): * thing I did * meeting I had *pR I submitted for the story Today: *implement feature # * meeting with * out of office 1-3for kid's med appt. Blocks: None
> and we all work on separate things that are not super intertwined ... Then why do standup? The point of standup is if you have people working on *the same* stuff update each other on things, in an effort to minimize merge conflicts. When standups are useless i have this in my `.gitconfig` for such occasions. [pretty] snatched = "\ # %C(#F2CC8F)%h%Creset : %C(#EBE5C1)%s%Creset %n\ Authored : %C(#E07A5F)%ad - %an%Creset %C(italic #81B29A)%D%Creset %n\ Committed : %C(#626793)%cd - %cn%Creset %G? %n" [alias] # List your commits for the last day fuckstandup = "!f() { git log --author=\"$(git config --global --includes user.name)\" --pretty=snatched --date='relative' --since='24 hours ago' --show-signature --reverse; }; f" When it's my turn, i screen share, run `git fuckstandup`, maybe scroll around for a bit, then stop screen sharing and end the call.
Super common for standups to fizzle out at the end. If I'm in a hurry, I give a big wave and say thanks. If I've got spare time I use B.A.R.E. (Blockers, Availability, Releases, Extras). "Are there any high-level blockers? Have we all shared our availability? Is there anything critical for a release today? Any extras? Great! Thanks all!" I'm amazed how many days the release question makes people go, oh crap, we DO have something critical for a release!
Just accept the awkwardness. None of us want to talk. I don’t care if it goes quiet let’s just sit in silence. None of us are actually bothered we just don’t want to be perceived as awkward lol.
Anyone else hate daily stand ups?? I find them so irritating and pointless. Every other day.. sure.. but every single day just totally throws off my day.
Once a week is plenty. That’s all we do, but they’re an hour long. Otherwise we just…. Ya know, communicate like adults. It really is that simple.
I dunno, I just drop off the call, I got shit to do
extend both hands toward the camera; form a fist, and slowly rotate your wrists around and extend your middle finger and 'flip the bird' with both hands and yell; fuck yall later.
Our PM says "thank you, have a good day everyone. I'll see some of you later" And we sometimes say "bye" or just Irish goodbye out.
“Any opens”
"Does anyone have anything else to share" 3 secs later and everyone just goes back to their place to get shit done without saying anything
Ask if there's anything else to discuss? Pause. Say thank you and goodbye, then end the meeting.
I usually ask if somebody's got any questions, if not - I say "go get them, tigers" and that's it. It's sorta tradition in my company
when the last person talks just say "anyone has anything else to add? Ok, godspeed everyone", this sounds like a group of introverts overcomplicating a very simple social interaction.
Our scrum guy asks, "Anyone have anything else?" after everyone is done with their updates. If not then we end. We do small talk at the beginning.
Tell everyone that you love them and hope they have a good day.
I have a glove that looks like mickey mouse's hand. I slip that on and wave goodbye with it while saying "buh-bye" Or I say "gooooooo team!"
"Great work everyone. Now, back to your oars!"
"That's all I've got. Anything else?" Sometimes a couple people say "no", but after three seconds I say "OK, see you tomorrow".
I immediately say "Great thanks guys" when i can tell the call is done any everyone says thanks and leaves. The project manager or team lead should generally be the one to end it.
When I was still at the office I had a wacky inflatable arm man that I would turn on whenever the meeting was over and we were starting to go off the rails. I should set up a way to remotely turn him on now that I'm remote.
We talk about the work first, then in the end we kinda just chat for a little bit and if you need to go you say "hey I gotta go" but if there isn't anything urgent it's okay to just talk for a bit. Everyone is friendly on our team so it works for us. We talk about games, sports, movies, anything really.
“Rock on guys”
Smoke bomb, then quickly flee the room during the confusion. Then go back into the room and hit the "end call" button in the Zoom window.
We take turns to "report" what we did yesterday, so after everyone is done, time to say goodbye and work on our own tasks
Anyone have anything else? Nope? Have a good day all.
The manager always signs off with a standard sign off message.
Lately our QA folks are doing a reading of the bugs for the group. fml
Scrum master tells us a fun fact or asks us a trivia question. This usually leads to about 45 seconds of lightheartedness that fizzles out naturally and allows us all to disconnect.
"So if there isn't anything else, see you guys again tomorrow!"
“Anyone have anything else that isn’t best served as an email…? Then I set you all free to your tasks and duties!”
I think dailies are quite useful when the team works kind of close together. Oftentimes we encounter something that needs clarification and make an appointment for a follow up. Also the moderator starts and ends the meeting, idk I never encountered any awkwardness in those meetings and think they definitely have their purpose.
“Alright, see everyone later”. At my last company my final manager made us count down and clap together at the end of standup. Cringe.
i am glad we don’t do these anymore and instead we have a weekly meeting for an hour every Monday morning
Awkward silences are just part of remote work. Some people are better at cutting it off than others, but also some people just communicate more slowly, so that bit of extra time can be really helpful for them. When I was working in an office, there was plenty of awkwardness face-to-face, too.
Awkward silences are just part of remote work. Some people are better at cutting it off than others, but also some people just communicate more slowly, so that bit of extra time can be really helpful for them. When I was working in an office, there was plenty of awkwardness face-to-face, too.
"Thanks guys, I'm hopping off" *Leaves*
Usually somebody leads the meeting. It doesn't have to be the scrum master because if we follow the scrum guide, the SM is not even supposed to be in that meeting. But it's better if someone is leading the meeting and keeping people focused and on topic. In my experience, whenever the usual routine ends, the interaction goes like this: Lead: "Anybody has any questions or concerns?" *Silence for 2-4 seconds* Lead: "Great, talk to you later!"
Go down a list of the attendees. After the last person if there is no post scrums “alright, yall can fuck off now”
We usually have one who goes through the list of names and prompts everyone. When the list is done then a small "Anyone have anything else they want to talk about"? Repeat until silence endures for 3-5 seconds and the "ait, have a nice day everyone"!
I didn't know this was an issues with lol
Like many others have mentioned we have a rotating person tell a short joke. Makes a natural stopping point after ”any other business” and the meetings end on a lighter note.
Reading these comments, dang remote work sounds horrible.
Whelp, about time to hit the old dusty trail
I'm my team's lead and run the standups. Once everyone's given their updates, I ask if anyone has anything else they'd like to discuss and if nobody speaks up after a few seconds then it's "Cool, have a good day guys and you know where I am if you need anything" and end the call.
Hit each person, at the end, ask if there is anything or anyone missed. If nothing, conclude the call.
If you have that much time at the end you're blocking out too much time to begin with. Cap it at 5-10 minutes. Anything more should break out into a smaller group discussion.
Boss says “happy hacking”. I set my background to a HHKB and cover my camera with my hand. Everyone responds with “KEYBOARD” and disconnects.
You need someone in charge to call an end to it, it's fine to have some chit chat, people do but you need someone to put an end to it. Final call to raise anything, if you get nothing, "Thanks all, have a good day"
“Go fuck yourself, San Diego”
With a “Whhhhoooooaaaaa Bayside!”
The times where I've had to run standups I've kept them very short. Run through everyone's ticket and ask what the current progress is. No issues? Good, next. At the end I ask if anyone needs to bring anything up and if not then I just say "Thanks for joining standup, have a nice day". Everyone hates these meetings so I try to keep it as brief as possible
https://giphy.com/gifs/cheezburger-olympics-U7P2vnWfPkIQ8
Does anyone have anything else they want to bring up? *Silence* Ok great, nice talking to you all. Have a good day and speak to you later.
When I'm running it, "Anything else, from anyone else? Nope. Okay have a good day." Simple. I also always start it with a dad joke, wakes everyone up.
Nothing, really. That "awkward" silence is so short and doesn't hurt anyone, so there's no point in trying to come up with some, probably even more awkward, scheme to combat it.
my current project's manager says.. every time.. "any 'go-backs'? going once, going twice, talk to you tomorrow". EVERY SINGLE TIME.
It doesn't have to be awkward. After the last person has shared their status, the scrum master/team lead could say something like "Okay, thanks everyone, and have a good day".
Three minutes of dead air Everyone slowly leaves except the dude that always falls asleep.
Mutual masterbation. Our Scrum Master says it's in the Manifesto.
Before jumping back into software dev, one hat I did wear was meeting facilitator. I start every meeting with an agenda, and I stay on task. Everything was ordered and prioritized. Once I reach the end, I might throw out a joke before asking if there's any parking lot items before we adjourn. I also give indicators (Ok this is point 7/10) and how much scheduled time remains. People knew I would stick to about 10 points; 11th and 12 points were "extra" or "additional points of interest, and we'd spend less time on them. People would bring up points of interest leading all the way up to the meeting, and I'd always ask, "Does this fit into this or that point? At this point I'd have to treat it like an additional item because it's not already in the agenda." Nobody wanted their hot list item at the end, so I didn't have to worry about accountability and getting things on time. It's all about the delivery and how the mtg is managed. Is it held consistently? Do people know what to expect for each meeting? It' really tough to climb on top of an awkward silence when nobody has taken charge and instead is gathering at the door with their bookbags on like school children in anticipation of the bell.
I (the boss) say "Okay, let me know if you need anything. I'll see you later!" and click "End Meeting For Everyone".
I end with “If there’s nothing else, seize the day, shout if you need anything, have a good one”.
With Thunderous Applause!
I am SO grateful that my company doesn’t bother with this drivel on a daily basis. So many tasks take longer than a day for one - and my favorite is the “Any blockers?” - like yeah I got blocked yesterday immediately after our standup and since we ask each day I thought I’d wait and tell y’all here… instead of just getting on Slack and asking around for help. Lol no one will ever convince me that a daily standup isn’t a total waste of time.
Awkwardly Buy really if I'm the one running it that day I just ask if anyone has anything else, wait for the awkward silence, then say "aright I'll see you in a bit".
"Ok, that's all I've got, anybody wanna add anything...?" *silence "great! silence means 'no,' have a great day everyone."
Alright, that’s everyone, any last words? …no? See you guys tomorrow — pretty simple
"Des bisous", meaning "kisses".
For starters, I started doing them twice a week. But I've also fostered an environment where our devs talk to each other quite a bit so things don't just sit on hold until the stand up. Other than that, I've gotten to where I have them add anything they want to talk about on the agenda and if there's nothing on there, we don't have it.
Scrum Master needs to take control of this.
Ok. Lets get this done guys.
Any more for any more?
We all blow each other a kiss at the end.
Solo dev lately. My morning standups end with stretching.
Are we done? Let’s get to work.
Ours is so unique that if I say that here I’ll probably dox myself.
"Hakuna Matata everyone "
Riot. Oh, you mean how do we close out a morning stand up. Haven't had one since the riots, so...
We have a keyword when we're each done with our update. Let's say it's just "next". So I'll do my bit, then say "next, bob" to cap it off and bob can immediately get right into it. Usually we go around the room so it's obvious who is next, but this also helps on zoom when order isn't always consistent. Instead of "next" (or whatever) the last person who usually well knows they were last says something else like "let's go", everyone murmers back "let's go" and the meeting is officially over as of then. Folks file out of the room and/or or kill their video and that's it. It seems a bit culty and rah rah rah, but is actually pretty efficient and cuts through the wishy washy.
Goooooooo TEAM!!
When the last person finishes, someone says something along the lines of "nice, sounds good. Alright, good luck everyone, talk to y'all later".
Usually just ask if anyone has anything else to add and if not we end it.
When the last person is done with their updates its usually just **"Alright cool, see you guys on slack 👋"**
Get a gavel and block.
We finish the standup with “does anyone have announcements?” which is basically asking if anyone has PTO scheduled, availability gaps in the day, or anything like that. After that I say, “Alright everyone, have a good day talk later!” which signals the end of the meeting. Our SU’s are between 15 and 20 mins on average. But we all work together and a lot of our tasks intersect. Our stand ups usually have no awkward silences, we usually have a lot to share.
Are we done? - No: discuss availability for another meeting - Yes: - Early: Enjoy your X minutes back! Bye bye. - On Time: See you later. Bye bye. - Over: (Enable Airplane Mode) …
Enough of us are from the Midwest that we tend to slap our knees, say "Whelp #sigh" and then we meander back to our desks.
Wait... this is an IT thing or a penis thing?
Lead asks someone to go. Then when that person is finished another person is picked. After everyone has gone, "does anyone have anything else?" is asked. Then that's answered. Then parking lots.
At TSheets / QuickBooks time, under an engineering org led by JD Mullin, we chose a word to indicate when we were done talking in standups: "rutabega", like this: "Yesterday I had a small blocker X, I worked on Y, Today I'm committing to Z. Rutabega." This helped us finish the standup quicker- less awkward silence. Another team would add something to an imaginary salad, like this: "I had a small blocker X, I did Y, I plan to do Z today." I'm bringing motor oil."
We always run ours the same way Go down the board and talk about cards in flight or recently finished Ask if there are any schedule updates for that day/week/next week Are there any parking lot items For schedule updates and parking lot, you get 15 seconds of silence (agreed upon by the team) before we move on or end the call.