Scrum/Stand up meetings
-
The tasks should be broken down in something like Jira. Given appropriate states, it becomes trivial to see what the status of tasks are without the need for meetings. The key is to keep tasks small.
This space for rent
A bit of caution about Pete's approach: If you take that approach, you might get dangerously close to an environment where you can trust the development staff to manage themselves. Then, the organization might realize that management is overrated. Who will we get to synergize efforts across problem spaces buzzword buzzword buzzword? ;P
-
Stand up is just a team sync up, to let the team know if one of them needs to help another or if some unexpected problem hit. It's that simple, shouldn't be some form of report to managers or somewhere where anyone should feel ashamed. A good team appreciates what each and every person brings to the table because we are all different.
-
Different types of people in my team. 1. The one that works like terminator, without any kind of distractions, Focuses on the tasks for 8 continuous hours. Reports a perfect list of items completed in daily meeting. These are HIGHLY productive but not much creative thinking. 2. The one that slacks a bit & never come to work on time, but suggests something surprisingly new. Also gets the work done in top most perfection, but with a marginal slip of deadline, occasionally. 3. There were very few, who got the ability to focus, be productive & at the same time come up with new creative ideas. And they don't stay in the organization for long. Now the abuse called stand up meeting everyday, It puts No.2 people in shame. Because they don't have a concrete work-log to showcase everyday, but on alternative days, they show the right progress balancing the previous day. And mostly done with better design/code etc. Sometimes they spend most of the time on social networks & Whenever they don't have something to show, they feel a bit shrunken. I'm thinking why should we put them to shame everyday in the name of meeting, when they are completing them all, every alternative day. But my directors insist to have this practice everyday. I'm just thinking.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
-
Different types of people in my team. 1. The one that works like terminator, without any kind of distractions, Focuses on the tasks for 8 continuous hours. Reports a perfect list of items completed in daily meeting. These are HIGHLY productive but not much creative thinking. 2. The one that slacks a bit & never come to work on time, but suggests something surprisingly new. Also gets the work done in top most perfection, but with a marginal slip of deadline, occasionally. 3. There were very few, who got the ability to focus, be productive & at the same time come up with new creative ideas. And they don't stay in the organization for long. Now the abuse called stand up meeting everyday, It puts No.2 people in shame. Because they don't have a concrete work-log to showcase everyday, but on alternative days, they show the right progress balancing the previous day. And mostly done with better design/code etc. Sometimes they spend most of the time on social networks & Whenever they don't have something to show, they feel a bit shrunken. I'm thinking why should we put them to shame everyday in the name of meeting, when they are completing them all, every alternative day. But my directors insist to have this practice everyday. I'm just thinking.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
I had a boss who wanted a daily standup where we reported status. We held it on an IRC channel instead of face-to-face (we had a profoundly deaf colleague). I got in the habit of pre-writing my status report and pasting it into the IRC window at the exact start of the meeting. My colleagues began to do the same. We achieved a 60-second standup. Once or twice a month, we actually had something to talk about, like needing help or hitting a roadblock. We managed to convert a useless meeting to a meeting whose uselessness took so little time that it evolved to a purposeful meeting. I had another job where we had a daily standup where people reported status. I started emailing the group my status before the meeting. This caught on among the group in about one week. In this way we took a "standup" that took one hour and created a more reasonable 15 minute meeting. Never do in a live meeting anything that can be done with electronic communication. The cost is too high. And yeah, you can call yourself agile, and describe your interminable meetings as standups, but if you do, you are delusional. Most managers are delusional. Why is that?
-
Different types of people in my team. 1. The one that works like terminator, without any kind of distractions, Focuses on the tasks for 8 continuous hours. Reports a perfect list of items completed in daily meeting. These are HIGHLY productive but not much creative thinking. 2. The one that slacks a bit & never come to work on time, but suggests something surprisingly new. Also gets the work done in top most perfection, but with a marginal slip of deadline, occasionally. 3. There were very few, who got the ability to focus, be productive & at the same time come up with new creative ideas. And they don't stay in the organization for long. Now the abuse called stand up meeting everyday, It puts No.2 people in shame. Because they don't have a concrete work-log to showcase everyday, but on alternative days, they show the right progress balancing the previous day. And mostly done with better design/code etc. Sometimes they spend most of the time on social networks & Whenever they don't have something to show, they feel a bit shrunken. I'm thinking why should we put them to shame everyday in the name of meeting, when they are completing them all, every alternative day. But my directors insist to have this practice everyday. I'm just thinking.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
Only ask about problems / impediments "during" the week; report "progress" at the "end of the week". Most problems are caused by not enough partitioning (i.e. tasks requiring more than 4 man-days); but expecting a "deliverable" EVERY DAY is ridiculous. I always gave people a week to complete a task or two; and the next week to fix it in case there was an actual problem and get back on schedule. Never failed. And involving folks in the estimating process usually drives the whole process to a successful conclusion because it was "their" estimate (no matter how ambitious it might have been). There comes a time when one deals with the peanut gallery and takes ownership of the project (if one has the confidence and cares enough).
-
Yeah we are breaking down the tasks as much as possible. This particular thing comes into picture, when the nature of task is like Writing algorithm for a module. For continuous days, the guy in context, will not touch anything, but on third day, he completes it matching with the estimate that he initially given :3 days. And it's something worth 3 days in fact. The first two days, he got nothing to share in the Sync meetings. He just says, I'm studying the problem, That's WIP, with a sheepish looks. But he goes back to his desk & spend hell lot of time in Facebook. I think somewhere in Facebook he's taking inspiration from to get into his work by mid-night of 2nd day, before coming to office. Why I'm not much affected by this usually is, The type-1 people who rigorously work, for sure take 3 days, to finish the same problem. The only thing I suffer a bit is the anxiety he creates by the 3rd day, I always doubted if he'll be able to finish it on time. 95% he's finishing it by 'EOD'. As he calls it! 'EOD' means precisely 12:00 am in his language. Not the evening 7:00, that all people log out of work.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
I believe that while it is difficult to tap into the subconscious, the subconscious is aware of problems we are contemplating, works on them, and can "surface" a solution to our conscious state as inspiration. So, yeah, "ignoring" the problem for a time actually means it's being worked on, but not consciously.
-
Different types of people in my team. 1. The one that works like terminator, without any kind of distractions, Focuses on the tasks for 8 continuous hours. Reports a perfect list of items completed in daily meeting. These are HIGHLY productive but not much creative thinking. 2. The one that slacks a bit & never come to work on time, but suggests something surprisingly new. Also gets the work done in top most perfection, but with a marginal slip of deadline, occasionally. 3. There were very few, who got the ability to focus, be productive & at the same time come up with new creative ideas. And they don't stay in the organization for long. Now the abuse called stand up meeting everyday, It puts No.2 people in shame. Because they don't have a concrete work-log to showcase everyday, but on alternative days, they show the right progress balancing the previous day. And mostly done with better design/code etc. Sometimes they spend most of the time on social networks & Whenever they don't have something to show, they feel a bit shrunken. I'm thinking why should we put them to shame everyday in the name of meeting, when they are completing them all, every alternative day. But my directors insist to have this practice everyday. I'm just thinking.
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
You are lucky that you got these 3 types of team members. I am facing uninterested cribbers who are even spoiling the new employees, management expects me to fill in the shoes of all team members and specifically states that I am responsible for 80% of the work rest of the team of 12 is just for the remaining 20%... they (management) does not believe in firing anybody-we don't have a culture of firing, we don't treat people like employees but like a family- which lead to a deposit of gangue in the team as the competent members moved on... its Monday morning 5:14 still in office... Standup meetings- they are not even interested in any of these.. you have to call every individual - even if you are doing it once a month, even then they have no issue and does not need help - problems are shields for them which they can hide behind in case management ask whats going on - so they don't want them resolved. Tasks and task list: they don't want to maintain it even on paper/ google keep / teamwork/ outlook - n number of solutions tried but if somebody is not interested, tool doesn't matter... Options I have: 1. give up -a. and leave the company -tried it but they are not even willing to discuss my resignation.. -b. and be like other - can't do it 2. keep going and burn myself out 3. involve the highest level of management to get things fixed - did that received some positive response, hopefully things will work out.